Micmacs, a French nonsense word that roughly translates as “shenanigans,” is the apt title of the latest movie mischief from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director and co-writer of “Amelie.” The new movie is a disarming tale of misfits who conspire to demobilize an arms manufacturer.
Spiced with melancholy and magic, “Micmacs” is an imaginative live-action film with the playfulness of an animation like “Ratatouille.” Similarly, it is a fable of subterraneans who change how life is lived above ground in a Paris that is at once retro and modern.
Bazil (Dany Boon), the reluctant ringmaster of this circusy adventure, loses his father in a land-mine explosion and years later nearly loses his life in a drive-by shooting. When he leaves the hospital to return to his work as a video-store clerk, he has already been replaced. Like Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, he leaves the familiar to brave the cruel world.
Among the artifacts Bazil brings with him to his new life are the spent land mine that took his father, which had its manufacturer’s logo, and the bullet that almost took him.
Fortuitously — the Jeunet-verse is governed by the accident and coincidence — Bazil finds a safe haven, peopled with misfits.
Among the others are a contortionist (Julie Ferrier), a human cannonball (Dominique Pinon), and a human calculator (Marie-Julie Baup).
Jeunet hangs a lot of plotting on a narrative thread, and the suspense of “Micmacs” is in watching whether that thread will hold or snap.
The film’s appeal is much like one of the inventor’s oddball contraptions: It shouldn’t work, but it does. Charmingly.
“MICMACS.”
R for some sexuality and brief violence. 1 hour, 45 minutes. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Starring Urbain Cancelier, Julie Ferrier, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Dominique Bettenfeld, Jacques Herlin, Yolande Moreau, Andre Dussollier, Dany Boon, Rachel Berger, and Dominique Pinon; Opens today at the Mayan.
