"Micmacs" Proves There's Such a Thing as Too Much Whimsy

The French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amelie" is one of my favorite films, in part for all the wonderful, whimsical characters he worked into the picture, some so sparsely, efficiently drawn that they often felt liked collections of itemized quirks. It worked for "Amelie," as the story was about a girl who placed great importance on little trivialities and found ways of using them to her advantage. It doesn't work so well for "Micmacs," Jeunet's latest, where the quirkiness and whimsy is often cranked up a couple notches too high.

"Micmacs," originally "Micmacs à tire-larigot," is a caper film. A young man named Bazil (Dany Boon) is our hero, his life touched by unhappy tragedy from an early age. The opening scenes show his father being killed by a landmine when he was a child, leaving Bazil an orphan. In the present day, he's hit by a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting, which costs him his job and all prospects of securing new employment. Left penniless, homeless, and perhaps about to die at any moment because of the inoperable bullet still lodged in his head, Bazil is in dire straits. Fortunately, he's taken in by a group of oddball salvagers who have made a cozy little home in the nearby landfill. They include a Buster (Dominique Pinon), a human cannonball, Tiny Pete (Michel Cremades), who makes mechanical sculptures, Calculator (Marie-Julie Baup), who is very good with numbers, Mama Chow (Yolande Moreau), the den mother to the group, Remington (Omar Sy), who has an interesting way of speaking, Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle), an elderly ex-con, and finally a friendly contortionist, the Elastic Girl (Julie Ferrier).

By chance, Bazil discovers that the landmine that killed his father and the bullet that ruined his life were produced by two big munitions manufacturers, whose factories are situated right across the street from each other. Their owners, Fenouillet (André Dussollier) and Marconi (Nicolas Marié), are bitter rivals and utterly unscrupulous bad eggs who are making a fortune in profits from their villainy. Bazil decides that the two need to be taught a lesson, and he enlists his new friends to help him seek his revenge. What follows is a chaotic, madcap adventure involving sabotage, kidnapping, subterfuge, and elaborate Rube-Goldberg plots that make use of everyone's talents. However, there are a few unforeseen complications that imperil our intrepid band. Also, the Elastic Girl falls for Bazil along the way, and in spite of Bazil's wariness of "twisted" girls, romance is soon in full bloom.

If all of this sounds like a lot of fun, it is. Jeunet's misfits are an endearing bunch, all glad to be of use and loyal to the end. The situations that they get themselves into are inventive and often very funny. The filmmakers get away with putting together a lot of random things together that shouldn't work but somehow do. The trouble is that there's too much. Too many strange characters, too many improbable situations, too much overwhelming wackiness, and if such a thing is possible, too much of Jeunet's fiendish cleverness. The universe of "Micmacs" is few more steps removed from reality than any of Jeunet's previous films, a place of cartoon physics, thought bubbles floating over characters' heads, and coincidences happening at the drop of a hat. After the relative realism of "A Very Long Engagement," Jeunet has gone for the other extreme, often stretching our suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point. But not always consistently.

As a result, I found the film dreadfully uneven and disjointed. There were some sequences that worked tremendously well, and some that just fell flat. I usually enjoy Jeunet films for their ready embrace of strangeness and whimsy, but something about this outing made these elements feel very calculated and a little forced. Maybe I've seen so many of these rumpled eccentrics and obsessive-compulsive artistes, that I've become immune to their charms. It didn't help that the script was very little light on substance, and the anti-war messages were especially blatant. However, I did admire a lot of the smaller moments and little details - Little Pete's machines, the Elastic Girl's wardrobe, and Bazil taking advantage of the wonders of Youtube. And the performances are great all around. Dany Boon and Julie Ferrier are sweet as the leads, but I got the most enjoyment out of Nicolas Marié and André Dussollier as the hapless villains who really sell the elaborate ending. In fact it wasn't until the ending that I really felt settled into the "Micmacs" universe, and then it was over.

I want to watch this one again, just to see if I might have missed anything in translation or perhaps failed to catch some bit of plot or character development that went by too fast the first time around. I really felt like there was something I wasn't quite getting about "Micmacs," because much of it seemed ever-so-slightly off from Jeunet's usual style and storytelling sensibilities. On the other hand, this is his first film in five years and his first comedy since "Amelie." It could be that he's just gotten a little rusty.