Atomik Circus - Le retour de James Bataille

Energetic and frequently mind-blowing excursion into manic cinema, this is a thoroughly enjoyable cross-genre science fiction tale – starts out as a love story between a backwoods wannabe rock starlet Concia (Vanessa Paradis, who has a face worth staring at for decades - damn you Johnny Depp!!) and a down-on-his-luck motorcycle stunt performer James (Brit actor Jason Flemyng); but her dad (respected French actor Jean-Pierre Marielle; aka the murdered professor from DA VINCI CODE) frames him for an accident and he goes to jail; but he escapes to try and be reunited with her. Meanwhile, face-sucking aliens land and begin decimating the populace, while in James' absence a chauvinistic entrepreneur claiming to be big in the music business tries to woo Concia with promises of stardom, while all manner of strange and warped townspeople have various activities and agendas of their own. It all explodes into an immense action climax. Filmed with hyper energy, most of its low budget spent on pretty convincing CGI effects for the aliens (I mean, they even have a mechanical dog instead of a real dog!), it's a thoroughly wonderful cinematic insanity, with something astonishing, humorous, disturbing, or very appealing at every turn.

I just want to put some positive words about this film on IMDb because I really love it. Maybe it's not a real horror film. It's maybe just a real comedy... But I think it's a funny love story. Characters look like they come from comics, very caricatured, they don't have to speak, you know why they are here. They are all very humouristic, especially the owner of Toby.

The first time I watch it I didn't appreciate that much because shocked by the cut heads but quickly I wanted to watch another time and now I really like it.

You should try the original version, no other way to appreciate!

A former comment spoke about a jambalaya about this movie, and I think it summarizes well this UFO (Unidentified Filmed Object). The acting is wonderful and it holds the entire movie: Marielle, Flemyng, Paradis, Poolevoerde, Venantino Venantini (unexpected in this part)and also Bouli Flanners(the fat chip cop)and all the third knives of this drama. From the funny-sex-gore movies lovers, It will be very delightful. Even if some shots switching from one genre to the other (from the Belgian-french surreal movie to the Italian Z to the US Cajun gore wonder through the Spanish funny and colored fantasy) inside the same movie are not perfect and need several seconds of adaptation, this masterpiece of nonsense needs to be seen at least once, twice etc...

finally, the shooting is perfect and unexpected.

Enjoy your watching this...thing.

That's a lot of halves! This is just your average sci-fi/musical/comedy/gore/action French film! A very bizarre mix of different things that doesn't completely gel but has some interesting moments. Jason Flyming and Vanessa Paradis (that's Mrs. Johnny Depp to you) star as two lovers who are being kept apart by a angry father in a dusty small town that is getting ready to run their annual talent show competition. Then aliens attack. You can tell the directors were trying to go for that "all out" approach like a Peter Jackson flick, but they never fully succeed. The singing dog is nice though. Benoît Poelvoorde (the hit-man from MAN BITES DOG) co-stars as a sleazy talent agent and perhaps gives the best performance.

Well the only problem of this movie is the marketing campaign, it has been sold as the latest comedy in town, and it is one of the first gore Z-rated movie in a very long time.

Compare it to Bad Taste, any horror flick from the 50's, or eventually to a Troma movie (there is nothing like lesbian-vampire-sex scene in this one). If you like those things, you'll agree that while this movie does not renew the genre and is only a sort of modern version of those oldies, we haven't seen this kind of things since the mid-eighties.

Amazing that someone financed this stuff in 2004 (but rumors say that producers signed the contract based on the actors and did not read the first drafts...)

10/10 !