Whilst the British film industry churns out another teenage crack addict drama, puerile sex comedy or gangster hagiography it takes Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jeunet to produce an almost perfect homage to of one of our great cinematic treasures – the Ealing Comedy.
Like Jan Svankmajer on Prozac
The basic Ealing ingredients are here – the plucky Davids against the powerful Goliaths, the mismatched band of heroes, the cunning plans which almost fall apart at the last minute, and a quirky romance, all of this taking place in the joyful insanity that is the Jeunetverse with its palate of greens and browns and wondrous inventiveness – like Jan Svankmajer on Prozac – it’s a perfect setting for this heartwarming tale of family and fixation.
Danny Boon is excellent as Bazil a video shop worker who after becoming the accidental victim of a drive-by shooting loses his job and finds himself adopted by a family of human French Wombles who live in a local scrapheap. He also finds out about the arms companies who manufactured the bullet which still lives within him as well as the mine which killed his father and he sets about his, Heath Robinson revenge.
The politics in Micmacs are a little heavy handed with the arm dealers reeking of almost cartoon evil and the denouement is a naive piece of wish fulfilment fantasy but this isn’t social realism it is, like all of Jeunet’s work, a special personal type of fantasy.
Unlike so many filmmakers – and yes I mean you Tim Burton – Jeunet still manages to infuse his work with real heart and if his passion sometimes gets the better of plot then it’s easy to forgive. This isn’t on the same classic level as Amelie or Delicatessen but for two hours of cocklewarming visual wonder it will be hard to beat this year.