- Dany Boon in “Micmacs”
In Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, there are two big weapons manufacturers in the French town where Bazil (Dany Boon) lives, and he has been victimized by both: Bazil’s father was killed by a landmine made by one, and Bazil is mortally wounded by a bullet made by the other.
Homeless and destitute, Bazil falls in with a gang of other discarded people on the fringes of society, living in a junkyard: an ex-con, a contortionist, a former human cannonball, a human calculator, a machinery artist. They all have questionable talents, except when they are united. Bazil enlists his new friends to help him take down the arms dealers.
With a series of serious practical jokes that unfold like Rube Goldberg machines, the gang pits the two weapons-manufacturer CEOs against each other and stand back to watch the damage escalate — until an exiled African dictator complicates matters.
Micmacs earns its many physical-acting nods to Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and The Three Stooges. Boon has a lanky body and an everyman mug but he comes alive with frequent poetic physical moires.