Mic Macs

Mic Macs

Jeanne-Pierre Jeunet’s Mic Macs has a similar feel to his other work - whether the fantasy dystopia of City of Lost Children, aborted Hollywood experiment/franchise entry Alien: Resurrection or the acclaimed twee romance Amelie, there is a palpable visual style that links them all - sickly greens and warm coppers with steam driven and clockwork machinery being a big feature (witness the mess of parts that make up Alien: Resurrection’s wheelchair). Mic Macs manages to combine the artistic direction along with Jeunet’s preoccupation for the more eccentric of characters, tying it all together in a tale that protests against the arms industry without being too self-righteous.
It centers around our misfit hero Bazil and in a fast paced montage sequence we see his father die during mine clearance in Africa, his mother bereaved and then taken off to a mental hospital, Bazil enduring a care home until he escapes and ends up working in a video shop aged 38. It’s here that we see him take a stray bullet during a drive-by shooting outside the shop; he survives with a bullet lodged in his brain, and on leaving hospital he finds his things thrown out of his flat and his job taken by someone else, leaving him to resort to busking until he is taken in by a group of outcasts living in a scrapyard. They work at re-purposing and recycling the things Parisians have thrown away and eventually come to help Bazil as he plots revenge on the arms companies that manufactured the mine and bullet that had such a huge impact on his life - one day during a routine junk run he discovers the two arms companies’ HQs opposite each other on the same road.
Lots of gags and slapstick ensue as each of the friends uses his or her unique abilities to help the plan come together.
Mic Macs succeeds as a warm comedy that manages to work despite some of the overly wacky characters and situations.