Micmacs (Micmacs à tire-larigot) (2010)
Average Rating: 6.6/10
Reviews Counted: 132
Fresh: 97 | Rotten: 35
It might be a little too whimsical for its own good, but Micmacs delivers more of the inventive silliness that director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is known for.
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Critic Reviews: 31
Fresh: 20 | Rotten: 11
It might be a little too whimsical for its own good, but Micmacs delivers more of the inventive silliness that director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is known for.
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Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 10,361
Movie Info
An underground lair serves as the point of inspiration for this deeply whimsical fantasy comedy (with echoes of Jodorowsky's Rainbow Thief) from French cause célèbre Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie, The City of Lost Children). The locale is post-9/11 Europe. As arms dealers go head to head with one another in a series of violent skirmishes -- suggesting that an apocalyptic cataclysm may be lingering on the horizon -- the unfortunate Bazil (Dany Boon) still reels from the long-ago death of his father
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Cast
-
Dany Boon
Bazil -
André Dussollier
Nicolas Thibault de Fen... -
Nicolas Marie
François Marconi, Fran... -
Jean-Pierre Marielle
Slammer -
Yolande Moreau
Mama Chow -
Julie Ferrier
Elastic Girl -
Omar Sy
Remington -
Dominique Pinon
Buster -
Michel Cremades
Tiny Pete -
Marie-Julie Baup
Calculator -
Urbain Cancelier
Night Watchman -
Patrick Paroux
Gerbaud -
Jean-Pierre Becker
Libarski -
Stéphane Butet
Mateo -
Philippe Girard
Gravier -
Doudou Masta
Head of the Rebels -
Eric Naggar
Marconi's Chauffeur -
Arsene Mosca
Serge at Video Store -
Manon Le Moal
Lola -
Félicité N'Gijol
Mrs. Cissé, Mrs. Cissé... -
Bernard Bastereaud
Mrs. Cissé's Husband, ... -
Tony Gaultier
The Horny Technician -
Stephanie Gesnel
His Partner -
Noe Boon
Young Bazil -
Julia Gunthel
Contortionist Body Doub...
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All Critics (134) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (97) | Rotten (35) | DVD (5)
Minor, almost trite, but still worth treasuring if you're not put off by "precious."
Top CriticJeunet remains one of the world's most imaginative directors. But Micmacs is a misfire.
While the parts are quite good, the sum is pretty pedestrian.
I suspect this is what the world looks like in Jeunet's head all the time.
Micmacs never bores -- Jeunet keeps the pace brisk and the mood ridiculous -- but the movie piles on the whimsy so tirelessly, you eventually start to choke on it.
Micmacs, finally, is a romp through comic cinema history in which everything zips by so fast that you're too distracted to notice that it's all completely meaningless.
It's superbly directed but the story just isn't involving and the characters are empty shells. Knowing how awesome this director can be, MICMACS was a major letdown.
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's distinctive brand of zany and whimsical humour has won him a dedicated following, and fans of Delicatessen and Amélie should adore his new comedy thriller Micmacs.
Micmacs is quick and funny and easy but so light it floats away from you when all is said and done, and doesn't leave much behind. It's worth the time you spend with it though.
We are encouraged to cheer for Bazil and his friends because they are so warm, quirky, and lovable ... Frankly, it's all a bit obnoxious.
Casi una mixtura entre Delicatessen (1991) y Amèlie (2001), Micmacs se nutre de referencias clásicas (el circo, el cine mudo, la pantomima, los dibujos animados y la historieta) para narrar una aventura cómica brillantemente orquestada.
Micmacs, if light and silly, is still a wonderful thing to behold, as clever and beautifully constructed as the wonderful automata that populate the tinker's workroom in the film.
It's a regular Amélie's 11, laden with screwball schemes and stripped of emotional arcs.
Dripping with gooey crowd-pleasing sentimentality.
So much time is devoted to chases and ricocheting bullets that whimsy for whimsy's sake takes over.
Boon's lovely, embraceable performance is perfectly twinned with Jeunet's deft, artful direction. The result is playful and oddly affecting, a Rube Goldberg contraption of a film.
As a filmmaker, [Jeunet's] prime virtues have to do with textural details, discursive forays into character, little grace notes that accrete into rueful human - and humane - comedy.
S'il n'y a rien qui cloche en soi avec ce sixième film de Jean-Pierre Jeunet, tout porte à croire que le projet fut tout de même entièrement réalisé sur le pilote automatique.
A colorful three-ring circus of a movie, as one might expect from a production with a cast of characters that includes a human cannonball and a comely contortionist; unfortunately, the labored whimsy quickly wears out its welcome...
While it bears some stylistic similarities to Jeunet's early work, in its muted yet rich color palette and more-than-slightly off-kilter vision of a surreal world filled with oddball characters, it feels far less substantial than that earlier work.
The results are so imaginative, so visually inventive and playful that we easily overlook the film's flaws - even when they threaten the very elements we're enjoying.
The charming if slight end result suggests Michael Moore by way of the Keystone Kops.
Deliriously inventive but dramatically empty, Micmacs is like watching a talented kid who doesn't know when to stop showing off
Audience Reviews for Micmacs (Micmacs à tire-larigot)
Super Reviewer
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who is probably most famous in the States for Amelie, has a few signatures that you can see in every one of his films. First, each character is almost always given an extensive backstory so that there are never minor characters just like, in life, there are never minor people. Second, the characters and situations are usually remarkably inventive and cleverly constructed. In Micmacs he's one for two. The main character is given five minutes of backstory, and his team of cohorts are given almost none, but the ploys they devise to catch the arms dealers are almost always delightfully carried. Watching a Jeunet character solve a problem is almost like watching a good magician.
Other critics have discussed the political message embedded in the film. One positive review, by Ty Burr, states, "Micmacs is the equivalent of a circus troupe setting up a tent in a war zone: You're entertained, even delighted, but after a while you suspect there are more serious matters at hand," but a negative review calls it "shallow." I saw the politics as tangential to the central, character-driven concern, and though I sympathize with both of those points, it didn't ruin the film for me by either bogging me down with a message or having the message so separate from the plot that the final moment seems like a departure.
Dominique Pinon is remarkable, a effervescent character actor, but the lead, Dany Boon, plays Bazil too cluelessly. Bazil doesn't seem like a clever guy when we first meet him, so when the plot makes his character perform clever ploys, it seems strange.
Overall, Micmacs is bound to be a disappointment for Jeunet fans, but it is nonetheless a solid, entertaining spectacle.
Super Reviewer
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Movie: ID: 770686296 Title: Micmacs (Micmacs à tire-larigot) Release Date: 2010-05-28 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 4 Status: 1
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Foreign Titles
- Micmacs - Uns gehört Paris! (DE)
- Micmacs (Micmacs a tire-larigot) (UK)
