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Micmacs | 2010 | R | - 7.6.4

A boy's soldier father is killed by a landmine, and as an adult (Dany Boon) he works in a video store and watches old black-and-white films. One day he is struck in the head by a stray bullet in a botched drive-by shooting and after his hospital stay, finds himself homeless, jobless and destitute. Afterward, he meets an ex-felon (Jean-Pierre Marielle) who makes a living in scrap metal and joins him and an eccentric group of genius outcasts in a wonderland of a salvage yard under the freeway, and together, they take revenge against arms manufacturers. Also with Albert Dupontel, Dominique Pinon, André Dussollier and Julie Ferrier. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. [1:46]. In French with English subtitles.

SEX/NUDITY 7 - In a viewing room in a pornography shop, a man watches through a window as a man wearing only a thong bikini bottom and a woman wearing only pasties over her nipples and genital area fondle each other for 30 seconds; the tassels on the woman's nipple pasties swing and she grimaces several times.
 A guard notices a woman wearing a corset across the street, trains a surveillance camera on her and watches as she and a bare-chested man fondle each other (we see her cleavage and thighs and the man's bare back); the man kisses the woman's chest several times as she squeals and moans and the guard's eyes widen, his face reddens, he drools slightly, and stops watching.
 A man and a woman kiss briefly three times in front of friends while one of the onlookers licks her lips as she watches. A woman kisses a man.
 A woman sings a line from "The Elastic Gal," who can twist and contort between some sheets (a vague sexual reference); a man inhales helium, sings this song in a funny voice to a female contortionist acrobat and she smiles. Two middle-aged men discuss their divorces and allude to romance being troublesome.
 A woman takes hold of a man's ear and leads him into a room off camera, suggesting sex.
 A woman is shown trying on a corset that reveals cleavage.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - Three men gag and tie another man to a bar stool, they play with boxes of bullets, each man loads one shot into his own pistol as they sit opposite the bound man, and play Russian Roulette with him as the target (he is not killed); another man enters the room and shoots the three men who fall to the floor, with red dots of blood on their chests.
 A man is struck in the forehead by a stray bullet fired in a drive-by shooting (a red dot on his forehead is visible when he slumps backward and blood slowly runs down his face and into his eye in a close-up).
 We see a surgical saw cut into a man's forehead in a hospital operating room (a thin line of bright red blood is shown) and we later see the man with a pale scar across his forehead.
 A guard dog corners a man and his two friends in an airport and they are arrested by security officers with rifles (the man has a packet of heroin on him).
 A man enters an ammunition distributor's building to complain about a bullet in his head, whereupon four men eject him, and one of them rubs his forehead, until he falls to the ground off screen. A man ties up and gags another man and holds a gun to his head, demanding information. Three men with guns bring another man into a room and threaten him with pistols, but he escapes unharmed.
 Soldiers in a desert search for landmines with a metal detector, and an explosion creates a small amount of smoke and a large burned area; a donkey brays loudly and runs away while other men rush to the burned area and the scene cuts to a wake. An arms factory explodes and burns to the ground: there are no causalities, but we see substantial smoke and flames, along with a heat wave from the explosion.
 We see four photographs of children with bandaged arms, hands and shoulders -- they've been injured by bombs. A boy is shown being locked into a basket and transported to a Catholic school (we see one eye through a crack in the basket). A boy is shown kneeling in shorts with bare knees smashed against a rod on the floor, as a nun announces to the class that this punishment is to make the boy godlier.
 Two men are bound and forced to stand in front of two dug graves: one of their captors sets a grenade and puts it into the mouth of one of the men and then sets a landmine and places it under the foot of the other man causing both captives to groan and offer bribes (the captive men finally fall to the ground, unharmed).
 A man is shot from a cannon and lands in a river unharmed. A man is shot out of a cannon and lands in a dumpster of shredded paper, he stands up, rolls out onto the ground out of frame, and groans.
 A man steals a truck, drives away, and is blocked by two men in the road with pistols raised; another man approaches from behind, bangs the two gunmen's heads together and they fall unconscious.
 Several people stop a car, lift it off the road with an industrial magnet on a truck, kidnap the occupants, put bags over their heads and transport them to a dirt expanse beside a river.
 We see a collection of human body parts under glass domes: a foot, a skeleton hand, a finger, nail clippings, a heart, etc. A woman steals a collection of human body parts by sucking them into a vacuum cleaner. A man attempts to buy Mussolini's eyeball from another man (we never see the eyeball). We see a skeletal hand with a mummified finger on its middle finger bone, in an obscene gesture.
 A young boy looks at pictures of the drawn outline of his father on the ground where he was killed in a landmine explosion.
 A man finds that all four of his expensive cars have been burnt completely during the night. A dozen large artillery shells fall through a man's office roof and land on his desk, hissing and emitting a stream of yellow steam (he is not there). A group of people diverts a man driving a van, causing him to run partially off a bridge and into a billboard, where his vehicle is lodged.
 A man smashes his laptop and throws it against a wall, while another yells and kills a fly with cigar smoke.
 Several people steal two suitcases containing weapons, they open the cases, take out a landmine, a grenade, a rifle and a pistol and a woman confiscates the weapons and locks them up as dangerous.
 After a gunshot wound to the head, a man is overcome by a blank facial expression and facial tremor and he slaps himself on the head to "snap out of it" in several scenes. A man describes how he burst a lung while blowing up hot water bottles for balloons for a Guinness Book of Records contest; he is facially scarred and exhibits several tics. A contortionist rolls out of a refrigerator when a man opens the door, scaring him.
 Two men argue about a diamond heist. Two men admit to illegal activity that harmed children in war zones in the Middle East and Serbia. A woman tells a man that another woman lost her two young daughters mysteriously in a sideshow house of mirrors and that she runs a salvage yard home to fill the emptiness in her life. An old man tells another man that a guillotine stuck in his neck and he survived (we see no scar). A man tells another man that a soldier died of syphilis, another one hanged himself from a lamppost, and one had a leg amputated due to gangrene. In a hospital surgical theater, a doctor asks a nurse to flip a coin to decide whether they will leave a bullet in a patient's forehead or take it out. A man listens to a speech about weapons causing much damage and making a lot of money for the company that manufactures them and tears come to his eyes. A man teaches his 7-year-old son about bombs and makes him memorize famous bombing events. A man is told by his ex-boss that he has been replaced by another person and he has no job. An announcement over an airport speaker system states, "There are arms dealers working in the airport. Do not buy anything from them."
 A man imagines a soccer game played on a field laced with landmines and sees a mine explode causing a scorched puff of grass and smoke (we see no injury); several other people cheer in the viewer stands. A man imagines a drawing that shows a man suffering from gout and gangrene in his foot, and covered by huge bandages.
 A cartoon on a TV shows a caveman with a six-shooter shooting another caveman in the forehead and the wounded caveman's hair grows together in bangs over the dark spot on his forehead.
 A street performer dressed as Satan, with beard, horns and pitchfork, stands among deep red silk material being blown by fans to look like flames.
 A man on a roof walks to the edge to urinate: we see a stream hitting the gutter beside his shoes and we then see the urine flowing out a downspout and around a dog and its well-dressed mistress, who steps to one side. A jar filled with bees falls and breaks; the bees attack a group of men (they run).

LANGUAGE 4 - 1 obscene hand gesture, 2 scatological references, 3 anatomical references, 3 mild obscenities, name-calling (Scarface, moron, alley cats, horn dogs, warmongers, twisted, pervert, peasant, bozo, dumb, contortionist, girly, rocket scientist), 8 stereotypical remarks about gays, women and men, 1 religious profanity, 3 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - A woman places a drugged sugar cube into a guard's coffee and he falls asleep after drinking it, two men in a car are chloroformed and kidnapped, and a man retrieves an envelope of "smack" (heroin) from a mailbox and later plants it on another man. Several men and women drink from champagne and wine glasses at a corporate reception, several people eat waffles that the cook says have rum in them, and an elderly man says to two younger men "The more you drink, the straighter you stand." A man traps a fly under an empty glass and blows cigar smoke in to kill it (it's still buzzing when the scene ends) and several men light and then smoke cigars during the film.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - War and violence, bombing injuries, illegal arms trade, ethics, greed, dishonesty, retribution, justice, loneliness, poverty, homelessness, family, friends, love, relationships.

MESSAGE - Caring families can be made up of all sorts of seemingly eccentric and even dysfunctional members.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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