Magical realism movies rarely work. Following the success of Like Water for Chocolate was a string of movies where the magic of love -or possibly a pastry product- wins out in the end, all with diminishing results. As an example, no matter how hard it huffed and puffed Chocolat might as well have been named Dry White Bread to better reflect how drab the whole thing was. Computer effects in movies rarely work. There are times when I think the worst thing that has ever happened to movies is the introduction of computer effects. Instead of creating new, unseen visions most movies are content to jab at viewers with hideous clumps of unimaginative pixels. Feel good movies rarely work. These sunny, cheerful movies may inspire a wave of feelings in the audience but they are rarely anything positive. With all this going against Amelie it's not only is it amazing that the movie isn't awful but that it actually ends up being rather enjoyable.

At the start of the movie we are given an overview of the life of Amelie, an odd, charming, lonely little girl who grows up to be an odd, charming, solitary young woman [Audrey Tautou] who works in a coffee shop in Paris. By pure happenstance she finds the opportunity to help out a stranger and decides she rather likes the feeling of being a guardian angel. Switching into Jane Austen heroine mode Amelie throws herself into her new hobby with abandon, becoming a do-gooder to those that she likes and a pest to those she feels deserve some sort of comeuppance. Along the way she meets the equally eccentric Nino [Mathieu Kassovitz] and she discovers that although she is quite good at dreaming up elaborate plans for circling around Nino she lacks the courage of her convictions when it comes to actually meeting him.

Amelie's world view might seem out of place if she actually lived in anything that approached reality. Thanks to computer clean up the Paris in Amelie has been washed, dried and dressed up in the brightest colors found in a box of crayons. Special effects fill the movie but instead of coming across as a show-stopping spectacle they feel like they are part of the everyday world or, more accurately, the everyday world that only be created in a movie. When pictures begin to chat with each other and their owners it all somehow makes perfect sense in the context of the fairy tale life presented in Amelie. This time out Jean-Pierre Jeunet has traded the rusty pipe motif he seems to favor as a director for a palate that's more pleasing to the eye. Thanks to Jenuet's creativity Amelie fully creates it's own colorful, stylized version of reality and sticks with it; it's like Umbrellas of Cherbourg without the singing.

Unlike Umbrellas and it's resigned outlook on life Amelie never lets go of it's sense of whimsy. It's the sort of movie that tackles you to the floor in order to express it's goodwill. This sentiment could come across as calculated but Amelie manages to remain good natured. Instead of being a movie that claims to be a quaint love story but is instead a complex contrivance Amelie is an elaborately put together movie about the most simple of emotions. There's a fine line separating those two ideas to be sure but it's an important distinction.

Amelie works because all the clever work that goes into the presentation makes the idea of love winning out in the end seem as simple and believable as the grin on Amelie's face. Whether the gingerbread house construction of the movie makes the movie's theme seem magical or so much fiction depends on the disposition of the viewer but while it's running Amelie makes a good case that anything is possible.

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