No one is arguing whether Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director of Amélie and City of Lost Children, has visual imagination or not; but whether imagination alone is satisfying is debatable. His latest film, Micmacs, begins much like Amélie, flashing through the youth of Bazil, a small boy whose father dies from a land mine explosion, before jumping ahead in time to see Bazil as an adult, working at a video store, lip-syncing the words to The Big Sleep. But then, after being hospitalized for being shot in the head with a stray bullet, he finds himself without a job, homeless on the streets, performing for change for tourists and strangers. It isn’t long before he meets a family of homeless eccentrics, and he joins them in their makeshift home inside the tunnels of a landfill. The rest of the film follows the misfit family – a contortionist who is a hopeless romantic, the Writer, the Calculator, and so on – as they, for no real reason other than it gives them something to do, help Bazil destroy two leading weapons manufacturers in town, responsible not only for making the bullet in his head, not only for the landmine that killed his father, but countless other atrocities for profit. Does this seem needlessly complicated? Well, it is. Exhausting too.

The visual style is as intricate and stylized as the plot, and is indeed the main reason to see Micmacs, or any Jeunet film for that matter. The world of the film is bathed in a yellowish hue, and like the piles of manipulated garbage – “recycled,” in the terms of the film – we have a visual style that is a recycling itself, layering the saturated reds and greens of Amélie with the grungy landscapes of Jeunet’s earlier work, primarily City of Lost Children and Delicatessen. The extreme wide angles, the never-still camera, and all the playful visual gags keep the energy up, but unfortunately, without a relatable character to ground the film, the high-energy visuals just end up exhausting.

How can such unconventional characters be so dull? Bazil himself (Dany Boon) is bland, and his assortment of friends never emerge as real people. They’re about as real as illustrations in a children’s book about a mute circus sideshow. They move and express with the over-the-top exaggerations of early silent film actors. Which would be fine, if we liked them. But the characters in Micmacs are forgettable; not unlikable, but not human. In fact, the character we relate to the most is the villain, the weapons manufacturer Nicolas Thibault de Fenouillet (André Dussollier), who spends his time either selling weapons to blow up children or luxuriating amongst his collection of stolen body parts from famous historical figures: Marilyn Monroe’s molar, Winston Churchill’s fingernails, Louis XVI’s heart. And he’s the most relatable character in Micmacs. Think about that.

Micmacs will satisfy diehard Jean-Pierre Juenet fans, but is unlikely to generate new ones. Really, the group Juenet’s hyper-whimsy would appeal to most is children, but Micmacs is Rated R for sexuality and violence. There are some definite not-for-kids moments, and yet it’s full of childlike characterizations. For those unfamiliar with Juenet’s work, you’re better off renting Amélie. Already seen it? Well, you might be better off seeing it again.