Jeunet is a master. Beginning with Delicatessen in '91 and stretching through a short but awesome list of films, he consistently demonstrates a weird and wonderful vision. His humor is always French, slightly absurd and always tinged with some sadness or stark reality. In A Very Long Engagement, Jean-Pierre Jeunet took on a wartime tale, but Micmacs goes after the very machines of war. It's a revenge tale told through a series of pranks and gags, as two warmongers are turned against each other. The main character Bazil, played by Dany Boon, is a product of loss that suffers his own loss after a stray bullet is lodged in his brain after a freak accident. This sends him spiralling, until he meets up with a bands of outcasts living on the fringe of Paris that take him in as family. This second family supports his recovery and he goes on to inspire them to action against rival arms dealers that Bazil blames for the death of his father and his own ill-fated accident.

The surrounding cast is filled with memorable characters, down-and-out folks that are struggling against seemingly impossible odds. Jeunet loves an underdog, as he demonstrated capably in Alien: Resurrection. Whether this was your favorite in the Alien series or not, you have to hand it to the man for pushing the envelope. He basically superimposed his own exotic vision on an entire trilogy's worth of material, coming up with an entirely different take on Ripley as both sacrificial lamb and dark alien brood-mother. Micmacs combines some of these elements with the complex courtship ritual of Amelie and Delicatessen. There's even a visual "quote" from Delicatessen inserted at one point in the film, that Jeunet fans will appreciate. His preference for depicting a slightly magical world is something he shares with directors like Terry Gilliam, but the real-world implications are never far away in Micmacs. Bazil is aiming for no less than complete destruction of his opponents, who are cast brilliantly as odious misanthropes that are much overdue for a comeuppance. There's also a message here about living as a consumer, rather than a creative person in society. Bazil's adoptive family is very much about living off the land, reusing the things discarded by the rest of society. Their persistent happy state in opposition to the twisted and perverted qualities of the arms' dealers mirrors the qualities that Jeunet believes contribute to satisfaction in life.

You don't have to have a philosophical position to enjoy Micmacs, however. It's a romp, by far the most extravagant that Jeunet has yet concocted. There's lots of humor here, but not of a variety that is appropriate for young viewers. About 95% of the film is completely PG, but the 5% that isn't will definitely keep parents from sharing this with their kids. A sex scene, albeit depicted as part of the running comedy around the Micmacs-fueled vendetta, is the clincher for the film's R rating. In many ways, this balance between clean comedy and quirky edge suggests that Jeunet is capable of doing more mainstream material. Here's hoping he finds his way into a partnership with one of the larger studios in the near future, to do some more crossover films like Alien: Resurrection. What would be really neat is a Disney-Jeunet match-up, to bring his vision to a property of theirs that needs revitalizing.