COMEDY; 1hr 44min (French with subtitles)
STARRING: Dany Boon, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Julie Ferrier
Mad cap comedy: Boon and Ferrier
As the opening credits boom in grand noir fashion, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs has already covered a good deal of ground. Video-store clerk Bazil (Boon, playful and woebegone as a puppy), surely one of the unluckiest men alive, lost his father in a mine explosion as a child and as an adult is shot in the head and left with a bullet in his skull. Adopted by a resourceful gang of junkyard scavengers who recycle their finds for sale, Bazil vows revenge on the weapons makers who have shattered his life. Which might all be so much hot air if his newfound family didn’t include an ex-con (Marielle) and a contortionist (Ferrier).
Jeunet (Delicatessen, Amélie) could film the proverbial phone book and his flamboyant flair and dreamlike lighting would stamp every page: his screwy exuberance is an ongoing story regardless of the plot he wraps around it. The mechanics of this one are trippy and quick, and to buy into them is to accept the absurdity of the moment — which can’t be so terrible when scrapheap nobodies can take on the big guns.
