Micmacs (2010)

Amelie and The City of Lost Children belong to those films that, although, you find strange when you sit through it for the very first time, they stay with you forever. I find the director (Jean-Pierre Jeunet) to be Europe's answer to David Lynch only a tad heavier on the regressive images and lighter on the subconscious horrors. So when he had another film out, I was not going to miss it. And, once more, I was glad I did.

A bunch of eccentrics (each with his or hers own quirky character and unusual personal history) come together by life's caprice and end up undertaking an impossible task: try to take down the two largest arms manufacturers in the country. Ingenious ideas, impossible retro gadgets (handmade from salvaged materials), and an unwavering sense of justice. No sacrifice is too big if it means making the villains pay for their crimes.

The colors are soft and comforting; the imagery is mesmerizing; the music will take you back to a more naive age; and the story will make you laugh, cry and laugh again. All in all, great entertainment!

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I managed to see Micmacs and thoroughly loved it. In true Jeunet fashion, characters have their specific quirks and little side-plot elements abound through the movie. A lot of what make movies like Delicatessen, Amelie, and City of Lost Children have this sometimes absurd but magical fantasy about them is present here but not overly gratuitous. Just the right amount and exactly how you'd expect it.

I've likened this movie to Three Stooges meets the A-Team versus Goliath. Really, two Goliaths. The plot is that Bazil's dad get blown up trying to defuse a mine made by a arms company. Later in his life, he is accidentally shot and the bullet is that of another competing arms company. Seeking justice, Bazil tries to confront the companies but is rebuffed quite strongly. He's then adopted by a rag-tag bunch of "orphans" called the Micmacs of the Slide Whistle who then join together to help Bazil take down the arms companies who have destroyed his life.

In true Jeunet fashion, we are introduced to each character who has a special talent that is exploited for the purpose of bringing down the arms companies. The plot, sometimes absurd and hilarious and not intended to be taken so seriously (as one reviewer earlier apparently doesn't get it). It's a comedy first and foremost and has all the hallmarks we've come to know and love from Jeunet. It doesn't move as fast as Amelie or have the sometimes overwhelming fantasy and magic of City of Lost Children but, in its own right, moves at a pace appropriate for the characters. And of course, Dominique Pinon is just over the top and brilliant as usual. Well done.

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MicMacs has a plot that defies summation, characters who each are more fantastic than the next, and the sheer joie de vivre that Jean-Pierre Jeunet brings to all of his delightful works. Here his clowns are up against the true clowns of today's world--vicious, selfish, heartless arms dealers. The boys and girls on Our Side must dive deep into their junkyard to find the tools to defeat these evil beings. And just why are they doing it? Because it's right, that's why! Needless to say, the baddies are defeated, the goodies are triumphant, and the whole flies by like a many-ringed circus performance.

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Like many of the other folks reviewing this, I'm a big Jean-Pierre Jeunet fan. Amelie, City of Children (La cité des enfants perdus), Delicatessen, etc...all exceptional movies and all having those surrealistic, fantastical, whimsical-laden settings and heart-tugging story lines that Jean-Pierre Jeunet does so well. Micmacs seems very much in the same vein of his previous films with a minor exception for me. I just didn't feel the character development was on par with his previous works. That one little ingredient in a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film that usually cements the experience for me is a level of empathetic bonding with the characters. He's phenomenal at portraying and visualizing a character's emotional response in a way that is so easy to relate to, usually in a very child-like and innocent way.

And that's where this movie just didn't quite reach the same bar as the rest of his works (for me anyway). The cinematography and set design were, per usual, incredible. The story line is interesting and entertaining, and the ensemble of characters he's created have that magical element, but I can't say I felt the same level of emotional connection to the characters as I have in his past movies. It seemed like he didn't have enough time to develop the background and pull the viewer in so effortlessly, say like the opening sequence in Amelie (still one of my all-time favorite sequences in a movie).

If you like Jean-Pierre Jeunet films, I expect you'll like this. I did, just not quite as much as his previous works (a couple of which I would probably rate 6 out of 5 stars), but it was still a very enjoyable escape during the hour and 45 minutes it ran. Definitely worth a watch.

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this is simply everything I want in a movie. It's charming, it's whimsical, it's a win for the good guys, it's creating a family out of unrelated, odd people that works (much better than most families that are related work,) it's lovely I felt good when I left the theater and this is the one movie from this year that I'm buying.

Don't get me wrong, I loved "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and "The Girl Who Played With Fire" outstanding movies in every possible way but I'm not going to buy them and watch them again. So, this is not a review by someone who has to have cute and sweet in her movies. But it is a review by a real movie buff, and a movie buff who has some standards as in, if you can't entertain me, I won't watch your movie! Mic Mac's entertained, it entranced, and at the end I left feeling that the world is a place where decent, caring relationships can happen, and that sometimes, just sometimes, the bad guys get theirs. That's a perfectly reasonable, even desirable, way to leave the theater.

I refuse to accept that a requirement for a good movie is that it is full of sturm und drang that's just baloney sixties thinking and also "I'm too cool to like fun stuff that isn't obscene and/or stupid or both" thinking. As an adult I find that it's very difficult to find movies to enjoy. Usually movie makers can't find their way through the maze of amusing bosoms and bottoms or blowing up something every 10 minutes. This movie maker can make a movie. I am grateful whenever I find one who can. I strongly recommend it.

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