Micmacs

City Paper Grade: B

by Sam Adams

CANONICAL: Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet returns to American screens after a six-year absence with wacky revenge tale Micmacs. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latest trifle is his first film since 2004's A Very Long Engagement, a relatively sober and melodramatic adaptation of a best-selling French novel. It's something of a retrenchment, harking back to the winsome, Rube Goldberg style of Amélie, with one significant difference. Rather than following the adventures of a twinkle-eyed waif, Micmacs is a story of revenge, albeit of a kind utterly bereft of malice. Bazil (Dany Boon) is a childlike video store clerk who's lip-syncing scenes from The Big Sleep when a bullet comes through the window and hits him square in the forehead. He lives, even though Jeunet cuts to a shot of the bullet sizzling in his frontal lobe, but he's not happy about it, and when he finds that the arms manufacturer who made the bullet sits across the street from the company whose land mine kills his father, a convoluted plan snaps rapidly into place. It's not easy to stage an antic comedy that has at its heart the images of children maimed by leftover land mines, but Jeunet doesn't struggle with the disparity so much as ignore it. Boon is one of Europe's most popular performers, but rather than attempting to win the audience's heart, he behaves as if he already has it, perpetually clowning like an over-wound toy. The aggressive immodesty of his performance doesn't fit Bazil's humble profile. Micmacs is ceaselessly, even relentlessly, whimsical; its French title, Micmacs à tire-larigot translates as something like "nonstop shenanigans," which about covers it. It's possible to be delighted by the movie and worn down by it at the same time. There are sections of Micmacs that express the joy of a certain kind of moviemaking so vividly you can't help but burst into a grin. But the movie leaves you with a hollow feeling, like the crash that comes after a sugar binge.