LYT Review: MICMACS

If I admit upfront that I didn’t like DELICATESSEN as much as most of my peers did, will my geek card be revoked?

I’m not saying it was a bad movie, mind you. Just that, considering it’s set in a post-apocalyptic apartment building and involves cannibalism, I should have liked it a lot more, but man, those underground guys in the rubber suits were just a bit much.

Director Jean Pierre-Jeunet, I think, really hit his stride with AMELIE, notably the first feature without his previous collaborator Marc Caro. Caro was always the dark one – his solo feature DANTE 01 is utterly devoid of the whimsy and cuteness that Jeunet films always have. Perhaps unburdened by that, and freed to be purely romantic – albeit with fantasy elements remaining – Jeunet gave us first AMELIE, then the slightly less endearing A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT. Now, however, he’s back to whimsy, and he may have counterbalanced himself too much. He’s very good at absurd personalities and visuals, but MICMACS, while entertaining, lacks that extra spark to make it truly classic.

Bazil (Danny Boon) is the kind of guy who exists only in Jeunet movies. His father was blown up by a landmine, and he has a bullet lodged in his brain due to an incredibly coincidental series of ricochets. That’s not quite enough to make him full-on Jeunet-level wacky, though, so he’s also good at mime, and likes to squeeze slices of processed cheese out of the package in flat, chewing-gum-like strips. Working at a video store has given him the ability to perfectly lip-sync to both movies and other people, so when he loses his job following the injury, street performance becomes all he seems to be good for.

Thankfully for him, the next generation of those wacky underground guys from DELICATESSEN is here (or maybe they’re technically the previous generation, since no apocalypse has happened yet): there’s a female contortionist, a human cannonball (Jeunet regular Domnique Pinon), a matriarch (SERAPHINE’s Yolande Moreau, showing her range), a nerdy black guy who likes to speak in hoary old sayings, and some other people whose distinctive quirks are all starting to blend together in my mind. But they become more relevant when Bazil discovers the corporate towers of two weapons manufacturers, both across the street from one another. One of them made the mine that killed his dad; another, the bullet in his head that could kill him at any moment.

Like a sort of Charlie Chaplin-meets-Yojimbo wanna-be, Bazil decides to play them off against each other, and with the aid of his new friends, who act like a demented version of a Mission Impossible team (the actual team version, not the Tom Cruise version), he screws up a bunch of arms deals for them, each time casting blame on the rival company, to the point where the two dealers are on the verge of totally annihilating one another. Until, inevitably, they realize they’ve been played...

Jeunet is clearly paying homage to classic cinema here, from the opening titles designed to mimic those of a Humphrey Bogart movie, to the use of Max Steiner music on the score. A silent comedy bit in which Bazil pretends not to be homeless to impress a girl is nicely and classically played, and Boon’s general physicality and expressiveness are aces, though when paired with a contortionist as his love interest, they may be easy to underrate.

Bits that play too self-consciously, though, are a mixed bag. There’s a clever sight gag in which the orchestra playing the score of the movie itself appears behind Bazil, who then smacks his head to make them disappear; it’s as if this is a movie all in his own head. More of a gamble is the billboards we periodically see around town that advertise the very movie we are watching, displaying the actual moment that is happening at that time. There is a fun pay-off to this, but it can’t really be justified in terms of the story’s reality, at least not that I can see unless one is really to stretch things.

The thing the movie really needs that it doesn’t have, however, is more of an investment in the Bazil-Elastic Girl relationship. It’s presented as something we’re supposed to root for, but aside from the fact that she’s the only chick his age, there isn’t much reason to invest in them as a couple. We know a fair bit about him, but in her case, we get that she’s stretchy and doesn’t like being stereotyped. That is about what passes for character development in MICMACS...hell, they could also stand to tell us what “MicMacs” means.

But if that sounds like a grouchy pan...it’s not. What we have here is a very fun movie to look at, and that is in no way meant to damn with faint praise. Jeunet, like his obvious antecedent Terry Gilliam, is good at making stuff that’s cool, and that should not be casually dismissed. But while he aims for the belly laugh, he misses the heart, and like the bullet in Bazil’s head, MICMACS skirts the edges of one’s cerebellum, threatening to  fully engage but never quite doing so.

MICMACS opens May 28th in New York, and June 4th in L.A. and other selected markets.

 

Luke Y. Thompson is an actor, writer, and film critic living in Hollywood.