The most anticipated French film of this beginning of the year with a budget of 65 million euros, “Asterix and Obelix: the Middle Kingdom” directed by Guillaume Canet bet on an XXL cast, where Gilles Lellouche and Marion Cotillard rub shoulders with stars of football, rap and YouTube. The result is disappointing.
Eleven years following “Asterix and Obelix: in the service of Her Majesty”, the film was a challenge for its director Guillaume Canet, who also succeeds Édouard Baer in the costume of Asterix.
After “Don’t tell anyone” and the success of “Petits mouchoirs”, one of the most popular figures in French cinema is tackling his first blockbuster, and a national monument.
Size change: Obélix said goodbye to Gérard Depardieu. Heavy task for Gilles Lellouche, close to Canet, to reclaim this character as powerful as it is touching.
>> To read also: Guillaume Canet on Asterix and Obelix: “I especially wanted to make a film that is in the DNA of comics”
Heading to China
In the year 50 BC, the duo of indomitable Gauls, heroes of comic strips by Uderzo and Goscinny, must this time come to the aid of the Chinese princess Fu Yi (Julie Chen), whose empress mother was imprisoned following a coup.
In order to deliver it, they set off in the direction of the Middle Kingdom, without suspecting that the army of Julius Caesar took the same path, with a completely different intention. That of conquering China.
For the first time, this Asterix film is not adapted from an existing comic book. A derivative album of this original story will be released in bookstores a week later.
>> To see: the trailer of the film
Swirl of guest stars
On the menu of this burlesque and incredible epic, some essentials: devoured wild boars, sunken pirate ships or stratospherized Romans. Kung-fu, scenario requires. All sprinkled with magic potion and traditional anachronisms of the series, but above all full of stars.
Marion Cotillard and Vincent Cassel as the electric couple Cléopâtre/César, José Garcia, Philippe Katerine as the Assurancetourix bard, Ramzy Bedia and the twisting Jonathan Cohen, in the role of the Phoenician merchants Epidemaïs and Graindemaïs.
Guillaume Canet also chooses to invite stars from other horizons: the singer Angèle becomes the sweet Falbala, OrelSan slips into the skin of Titanix, appear the rappers Bigflo and Oli, the YouTubers McFly and Carlito. Without forgetting a certain Zlatan Ibrahimovic under the Roman helmet of Antivirux.
>> See also: excerpts from RTS programs evoking the film
Unconvincing movie
On the side of French and Swiss critics, Guillaume Canet’s “Asterix and Obelix” hardly convinces and is not up to its budget. “I got a few smiles at times, not a lot of laughs, and the film did not convince me (…) The result is too disjointed, we put on the anachronisms, as usual, but at the excess”, regrets Vincent Adatte, cinema specialist in the program “Vertigo” of the RTS.
As for Rafaël Wolf, cinema specialist for the RTS, he sees only one positive side in this blockbuster: “I was pleasantly surprised by Gilles Lellouche, who really brings a candor and good nature to the character of Obélix who quickly makes you forget Gérard Depardieu”.
For the rest, the film has no interest in his eyes: “We are in an uninterrupted cascade of guest stars, without real sequences and words, without coherence or harmony (….) We don’t know where Guillaume wants to go Canet in terms of directing. He wants both to make an extremely realistic film, and therefore his staging is a bit flat and without effects. And then on the other hand, when he wants to do fight scenes, he falls back through computer-generated images unworthy of a film with a budget of 65 million euros”.
olhor with afp
