Micmacs is a return to form for the exquisite Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The movie is as inventive, clever, and fun as all his other movies, with the expected bedazzling visual style and quirky, lovable heroes. The movie centers around Bazil (Boon). After being shot in the head by a stray bullet, he loses his job at a video rental store and takes to the streets for money. He is given shelter and friendship by a group of oddly-talented misfits (Pinon, Marielle, Ferrier, Moreau, Crémadès, Sy, Baup) who live underneath a garbage dump. One day he finds himself walking down a street separating the two biggest arms manufacturers in France. He gets it in his head--like the bullet that still resides there--to teach them a lesson for all the pain he's suffered at their hands, but he is going to need the help of all of his newfound friends.
The movie is simultaneously magical and believable. Jeunet creates a bizarre, exceptional world brimming with personalities instead of characters, spectacles instead of events, and mazes instead of plots. But it is a world that is self-contained, a world that survives under its own unique rules and regulations and not necessarily those of our world. His movies do not require you to suspend your disbelief so much as they require you to engage and engorge your belief, to open up your mind to match his own. Jeunet is full of imagination and, luckily for us, he is able to faithfully reproduce that same world for our benefit. His movies leave you with a grin on your face and a lightness in your soul.
But I have spent many words explaining why I like Jeunet and very little on why I like this movie. Micmacs is as technically proficient as any other Jeunet movie, and perhaps even a bit more ingenious, but it did not have the same oomph as Amélie or A Very Long Engagement. Nor did it have as clear or as relevant a message, at least for me (I found even less here than in Delicatessen). But none of that is a bad thing and none of that diminishes this movie in the slightest. Micmacs is overwhelmingly enjoyable and entertaining, otherworldly in the best possible way, and it is a movie that I would not hesitate to watch over and over again.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1149361/