Review of Micmacs (2009) by Nathan C — 09 Sep 2010

The video store clerk Bazil (Dany Boon) grew up with a hate towards war and weapons after his father was killed by a landmine in Morocco when working as a military mine searcher. Then one fateful night at work in the videostore, a stray bullet from a nearby shootout embeds itself into Bazil´s brain. Due to his stay at the hospital, he loses his job and home, thus ends up as a homeless and he has to do what ever he can to survive. One day he bumps into a older man, a pardoned convict who introduces him to a band of eccentric junkyard dealers including Calculator, a math expert and statistician, Buster, a record-holder in human cannonball feats, Tiny Pete, an artistic craftsman of automatons, and Elastic Girl, a sassy contortionist. When Bazil suddenly gets a chance to take out revenge on the two weapons manufacturers who are responsible for producing the landmine who killed his father and the bullet lodged in his brain, he constructs a complex scheme that his newfound family is all too happy to help set in motion...

One can not say it too often, Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a genius in terms of cinematic storytelling. His movie magic is unique and I love his craftsmanship. "MicMacs" contains of his ususal visual magic, but the story feels somewhat not that engaging despite an important topic. It becomes as well a bit over the top with all the gadgets and how "crazy" the junkyard dealers are. I would say that "MicMacs" is Jeunet´s weakest movie to date. Nice packaging, but I found a less exciting content. It´s an ok movie, but not more unfortunately. Hoping the next one will be better.