Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet puts his all into ‘Micmacs’

As director Jean-Pierre Jeunet can testify, inspiration can often first be found in adversity.

After making the lengthy drama “A Very Long Engagement,” which reunited him with his “Amelie” star Audrey Tautou in 2004, the French filmmaker spent two years of his life in pre-production on “The Life of Pi,” based on the bestselling book by Yann Martel, for 20th Century Fox.

“I wrote the script,” says the burly 56-year-old filmmaker during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “We did location scouting in India. I took 3,500 pictures with my little camera. I had made the storyboards. It was a beautiful novel about a kid alone on a lifeboat with a tiger. It was a huge budget.”

Too huge.

Eventually, says Jeunet, the studio went in another direction. “It was too expensive,” he laments. “Now it is Ang Lee who is supposed to make the film” (although his version is currently also having budget issues as well).

Because he was so eager to get back to filmmaking after the “Pi” debacle, Jeunet threw everything but the kitchen évier into his latest movie, “Micmacs,” which opens in L.A. theaters Friday.

“I didn’t want to put any limits, any restrictions on me,” says Jeunet, relaxing in the late afternoon in the bar at a tony Beverly Hills hotel. Though he speaks English quite well, a translator is on hand just in case he needs help.

“I put in all my influences, ‘Mission: Impossible,’ Charlie Chaplin, ‘Toy Story’ into it,”’ he explains.

“Micmacs” shares the whimsical quirkiness of “Amelie,” his 2001 international hit about a young woman who tries to help everyone around her but can’t find love, but this time Jeunet paints with much bolder colors — there’s war, death, love, arms manufacturers, toy makers, intrigue and even a contortionist.

“I wanted to make a film of revenge with slapstick and comedy,” Jeunet says. “I tried to mix the comedy with a serious issue. I thought Charlie Chaplin did it with ‘The Great Dictator’ and Kubrick did that with ‘Dr. Strangelove.’ Some people [in France] were surprised because the beginning is sad and it becomes funnier and funnier.”

Stand-up comedian-turned-actor-director Dany Boon plays Bazil, whose soldier father had been killed when he was a baby by a mine explosion in the Moroccan desert. Years later, Bazil is working at a video store when he is accidently shot in the head by a stray bullet that remains in his brain. Unable to get his job back after he’s released from the hospital, the homeless Bazil finds refuge with a group of lovable misfits who live in a cave somewhere in Paris. One day, he walks by a weapons manufacturer and notices that its logo is the same as one on the mine that killed his father and on the bullet that nearly ended his life. Bazil and his band of misfits decide to bring the weapons manufacturer down.

Jeunet originally cast Jamel Debbouze from “Amelie” in “Micmacs,” but he passed “for personal reasons,” Jeunet says. “I don’t want to say what they are. I don’t want to know.”

He had run into the same problem with “Amelie,” when he originally cast Emily Watson in the title role; she also left the production before filming began. But in both cases, Jeunet quickly found outstanding replacements.

Jeunet found working with Boon — who is not only a great physical comedian, but he also can wear his emotions on his face just as the famous silent comedians like Chaplin and Buster Keaton — a unique experience.

“He is always perfect,” Jeunet says. “It is very useful when you have an actor in the scene who is less interesting [than him].”

susan.king@latimes.com