Review of Micmacs (2009) by Rick F — 27 Aug 2012

It's wrong to judge a movie by its director's previous successes, but so easy I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway.

One word: Amélie. You loved it. We all did. It's one movie that is praised to the heavens deservedly. Why was Amélie so good? The quirky characters? The absurd situations? The silent-cinemaesque comic scenes? No. Amélie was so great because it had heart. It had a main character you fell in love with instantly, who you completely empathised with. You wanted to believe in her journey and you were pulled into her world.

This is what Micmacs lacks. A heart. All the usual ingredients of a Jeunet movie are there, but you never really feel caught up in the story and never really care for the characters - so while watching their drama you're left with a feeling of "so what?".

As the movie progresses the characters never come up against anything to really challenge them. We never feel like the characters are risking anything. There's no tension. Amélie had tension - she had a lot to lose: love. In Micmacs the characters have nothing to lose but everything to gain, there's no real possibility that something bad will happen in their perfect world so we always know how it'll end.

And when it does end, you are glad to have seen some nice ideas, but you're also a little disappointed that those ideas weren't tied into something more dramatic - something that could help us believe in them.