Astérix aux jeux olympiques (2008) Reviews

• New adventure of the immortal Gauls plenty of computer generator special effects

  ma-cortes2009-05-25

  Gaul is entirely occupied by the Roman. Well not , entirely . One small village of indomitable Gauls holds out against the invaders. Life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camp. In the village are our friends, Asterix(Clovis Cornillac substituting to Christian Claver), he's a shrewd and cunning little warrior, his inseparable partner is Obelix(Gerard Depardieu, as always), he's ready to drop everything and go off on a new adventure with Asterix , Panoramix(a recently deceased Jean Pierre Cassel), the venerable village's druid who brews magic potions , his speciality is the potion which gives the drinker superhuman strength , without forgetting the chief Abraracourcix and the singer Bardo Cacofonix. Besides a young villager enamored a beautiful Greek princess named Irina(Vanessa Hessler). Then our heroes decide participate in the Olympic Games in Olympia. There they must confront against the Caesar's(Alain Delon substituting to Gottfried John and Alain Chabat) son named Brutus(Benoit Poelvoorde). The picture captures outrageous adventures,tongue in check,anachronisms, feats and hilarious moments here and there. Packs sympathetic first appearance of Julius Caesar by Alain Delon doing a self-homage with musical background from the Clan of the Sicilians. Appear several secondaries Spaniards and French as Santiago Segura, Monica Cruz and Jean Pierre Castaldi,Janel Debouzze repeating his role of Numerobix and the wrestling champion Nathan Jones as Humungus. However this time doesn't appear the likable pirates and their sinking ships , being substituted by known football players in a silly ending with a balloon as plot. The motion picture is regularly directed by Frederic Forrestier though contains lively musical score and colorful cinematography by Thierry Argobast. This inferior third entry shot in live acting is preceded by ¨Asterix vs Caesar¨ directed by Claude Zidi and ¨Asterix and Cleopatra¨ by Alain Chabat and with Monica Belucci.

• Gauls lose strengh in the third outing

  powerfull_jedi2008-02-25

  I remember the first two movies, while made essentially for kids, they had good enough jokes adults could watch. This new movie, however, seems to confirm the trend that often times, the third movie of the series ends up being more controversial in the sense that after two good movies(well an acceptable one and a pretty good one), fans are obviously expecting more, but it's precisely at the third time around something happens: the actors seem bored, the acting feels tired and stiff, the plot is nothing special and ultimately, the crowd notices that it is a bad movie. The same happened in Spider Man 3, Asterix follows that trends. In this particular story, even the title is misleading, a lovesick gaul wants to be engaged to a Greek princess, but her father begs her to marry Cesar's son(OK, first off, major continuity error: in the second movie, Cesar was a somewhat young emperor and had just married Cleopatra, now he appears as old man and already has an adult son). Ultimately, she decides to wed the winner of the upcoming Olympic tournament, so the guy decides to recruit Asterix and Obelix to help him win the Olympics. OK, fair enough. However, that's where things start crashing down... As the main characters, Asterix and Obelix end up for the most part being side characters to assist the main one and the vast majority of the famous Asterix characters are reduced to background filler, surprisingly the village singer gets about as much screen time as the main heroes, but even Asterix had few lines and does very little then do his whole routine which is beat up romans, though they don't do much of that here nor can they use most of their powers with the potion, since it's the Olympics they get themselves disqualified for using them(through doping tests done by blowing into weird-looking beetles). So by removing those powers they end up doing very little, other then giving the villains the edge until they turn it around for them. Of course, you would expect Asterix to be filled with funny gags and lots of historical references, but here not only do the jokes feel stale, but most of the times it's a very hit and miss affair... One obvious example would be the light saber gag, where one of the soldiers plays around with a light saber that just so happens to be in a shelf of an chemical lab and does an Obi wan-style pose. That gag, as well as countless others, seems so forced, predictable and repetitive(like Brutus's useless attempts to do away with his father that just ends up always the same way). The only remotely good jokes are very far and between... Again, back to the performance of the actors, Asterix is barely there, the actor who plays Brutus becomes tiresome after a while and Gerard Depardieu continues to do his same routine of a huge dummy but there he just doesn't put as much heart in it as he used to, it's safe both of them, including the other main character disappear at the end of the movie. Everybody else doesn't stand out, not even a returning character from the second movie(I had hopes that he would be the saving grace at the end of this picture only to be lost with a host of pointless cameos that just make the ending go longer and longer for no reason). In the end, this movie might only be acceptable for the most hardcore Asterix fans, but even they could be in for a huge disappointment. Honestly? Wait for the DVD, so you can rent it, because not even special effects save this from being an average at best comedy movie.

• Ne touchez plus Astérix, sales idiots! :@

  Mihnea_aka_Pitbull2008-01-29

  Rarely I do feel so outraged, but this piece of mindless images-in-motion is positively a sacrilege. NOTHING remains of the bright and snappy Humor of Gosciny and Uderzo. The ONLY puns worth a half-smile are the meta-movie ones: Alain Delon mentioning guepards, samurais, Rocco's brothers and the Sicilians' clan, or Schumacher running in the race with a Ferrari battle-car - but even these are obsolete, old-fashioned and excessive. Further, the humor is admirable, sublime we can say, but totally amiss. ALL the gags are forced, painfully slow, grotesquely overdone. The script is an absolute mess - no convincing story-line, no dramatic structure, no sense of rhythm (all these being capital errors when doing a comedy; even more so, for such a difficult and ambitious comedy as Astérix: absurd, fantastic, cunningly warping history, childish in an intelligent way). All in all, as other comments rightly stated, this film-lenght is the worst of all three: definitely slow, much too long, outright boring and worse than amateurish - it's DILETTANTE! If you loved Astérix, avoid it - it will incense you. If you don't know the Gaul hero, avoid it harder - it will unfairly compromise him forever in your eyes. The ONLY Astérix remains the one in the toons and comic books.

• Worst of the three

  laci-52008-01-08

  The first one looked good but just could not get the humor right. The second one was quite good; close to the sense of humor of Gosciny (and Uderzo as well). So I was hoping for something good. Now the third one is kind of terrible. The visuals are okay (yes you see the CGI but it's not a problem in a funny movie based on comics) but almost everything else... The humor is worse than in the first one, the movie is just too long, the cameo-filled last ten minutes seem to be shot only for the end credits (they just don't make sense in the movie) but somebody must have thought they are funny enough for the movie - they are not. There are strange parts meant to be funny (e.g. the laser sword you could see in the advertisements - if they had to include a star wars joke again then why not make it at least a bit funny?), even the time between intended (forced and overplayed) gags is too long. Alain Delon is moderately funny as Caesar but his part is also overplayed, overly long. The new actor playing Asterix is a, as high as Obelix... b, never as funny/witty-looking as Christian Clavier. So what could go wrong did go wrong with this movie; maybe children will enjoy it but probably it will be too long for them as well.

• Inexplicably terrible followup to Cleopatra

  j-connolly2008-02-18

  I was really looking forwards to this: Whereas "Asterix & Cesar" wasn't great, they seemed to have found their stride with "Asterix et Cleopater" only to inexplicably throw it all away with this heap of rubbish. Where shall I start: The cast. Clovis Cornillac - catastrophic. There isn't a hint of the quick wittedness and light footedness you expect of Asterix. Instead of being the mainstay of the film, he's a sideshow: Unfunny, uncharismatic. Bring back Clavier! Alain Delon? I nearly wept! He's an all time legend. Cool, hard, dangerous. And here? A creepy buffoon. His worst role. Ever. That's enough. Now the plot: In Asterix & Cleopatre, the writers (and director) managed to update the Goscinny original comic spirit and clever references very successfully in my opinion. That is, without sacrificing the flow of the narrative, and without over-emphasizing modern references. That is, they didn't get in the way nor did they hobble the Goscinny narrative. These clowns seem to have completely missed the plot. The unsubtle references stick out like a sore thumb, and the things referred to will all be forgotten in a few years. But more fatally for the plot: they've glued together episodes from different Asterix books with elaborate pastiches to try and re-establish some sort of story logic. Then, they have seriously warped the actual olympic games narrative flow. The plot they've come up with leaves you constantly thinking "What? How ... why is this happening now? Where is such-and-such gone?" and most importantly "hmm, was that joke supposed to be ... funny?". All in all, truly catastrophic. The only saving grace is - I supposed toddlers might find it exciting.