The films of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the French equivalent of England’s Terry Gilliam, are quite inventive and “Micmacs” is no exception. This is a movie full of quirky people doing eccentric things although Jeunet does have a point to make with his narrative. Bazil (French comic Dany Boon), who lost his father to a land mine when he was a child, is hit in the head by a stray bullet, which almost kills him. Bazil traces the mine and the bullet to rival armament companies, whose offices sit across from each other in an industrial zone on the edge of Paris. One of the CEOs is Fenouillet (Andre Dussolier), whose passion is collecting the body parts of historical figures, like Churchill’s fingernail clippings. His nemesis, Marconi (Nicolas Marie), has a young son and lives in an ultra modern apartment. With the help of a group of misfit junk collectors (the Micmacs of the title), Bazil sets out to take revenge on these entrepreneurs of war that is both whimsical and serious.
Jeunet surrounds Boon with an able, if unconventional, cast of characters. There’s the doting Mama Chow (Yolande Moreau); ex-con master lock-picker, Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle); a number-crunching whiz, Calculator (Marie-Julie Baup); a one-man Guinness Book of Records, Buster (Dominique Pinon); the scrambled proverb-spouting Remington (Omar Sy) and contortionist, Elastic Girl (Julie Ferrier). Watching “Micmacs” is like watching a live-action cartoon and once you get used to the oddity of the whole thing, you can sit back and enjoy it. Subtitles. 6/10/10
1 comment:
A very unusual cartoonish movie with a good cast of French actors and "Mission Impossible" type of story. This French film is worth seeing on a lazy afternoon if you don't have much to do.
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