After a strange detour into World War I for "A Very Long Engagement," Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the French di rector of "Amelie," is back to more lighthearted whimsy with the delightful "Micmacs."
The setting (again) is Paris, where Bazil (Dany Boon) is a video clerk who is happily watching Howard Hawks' "The Big Sleep" when a stray bullet from a nearby shooting lodges in his brain.
Addled after surgeons decide on a coin's toss not to remove the bullet, Bazil becomes obsessed with its manufacturer, whom he identifies as also being responsible, coincidentally, for a land mine that killed his father.
By this point, Bazil is living in a junkyard with a band of eccentric, gadget-oriented street people who help him with a convoluted plan to embarrass the arms dealer (Andre Dussollier).
Among Bazil's confederates (and possible love interest) is the contortionist Elastic Girl (Julie Ferrier), who hides in a package the gang smuggles into the dealer's apartment, which our hero monitors by way of microphones lowered into his fireplace.
There's also Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle), an expert lock-picker; Buster (Dominique Pinon), who tries to top his long-ago record as a human cannon ball as part of the plot; and Calculator (Marie-Julie Baup), whose math talents are summed up by her name.
Giant magnets, ropes, pulleys, fishing poles and other low-tech devices are employed by Bazil, who sort of fancies himself as a reincarnation of Philip Marlowe, the private eye played by Humphrey Bogart in "The Big Sleep."
Jeunet employs generous helpings of music from the older movie, as well as pieces of other scores by the great Max Steiner. Influenced by Jacques Tati, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton -- as well as the British "Carry On" slapstick farces -- this film has long stretches without any dialogue at all.
"Micmacs" will appeal to older children, despite the film's ridiculously inappropriate R rating.
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