Micmacs isn’t a bad film at all. In fact, it’s got quite a lot of charm. The plot of Micmacs is as much a political wish-fulfillment fantasy as The Ghost Writer, but its outlandishness almost makes it more believable. The actors ably toe the line between zany and overly twee, with the sorts of expressive faces and bodies usually found in the circus, not the cinema. Even the characters who threaten to be one-note (the contortionist, the calculator, the human cannonball) work precisely because there’s no emotional arc or complex characterizations to distract from the story or the visuals. Micmacs also marks the return of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and his distinctive visual style, a cross between a live-action cartoon and a shot-for-shot remake of an Old Hollywood picture. Jeunet stuffs the film with a dazzling number of ideas, regardless of whether they have anything to do with the story: a do-nothing machine, a pastiche of The Big Sleep, an animated sequence depicting famous weird deaths.
But why, then, does Micmacs fail to leave much of an impression? Perhaps because Jeunet, by making his films so singular, has constructed such a narrow universe that it becomes claustrophobically familiar. All the usual Jeunet trademarks are there, but they’re not as surprising if you’ve seen Delicatessen or Amélie before. That said, there’s something comforting about returning to Jeunet’s universe. Even if you know what you’re getting for Christmas, you can still enjoy the gift. Micmacs is a fun movie, if only to marvel at Jeunet’s ingenuity and skill. But will you remember it the next day? (I barely do.)
Look, Sally, Look 