Films

Up against it

Critically, I’m pitting the Asterix films against some fierce competition. Like all sane people should, I love the current American animated sit-coms like The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy. I also love classic Hollywood animation like Tom and Jerry, Popeye and, especially, the Warner Brothers shorts featuring the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the aforementioned (check the news page under 14 August 2003) red-whiskered varmint. The makers of these cartoons – including Max and Dave Fleischer, Joseph Hanna and William Barbara, Chuck Jones and Max Freleng understood something that the makers of Asterix animations decidedly don’t: that in animation less equals more. Warner Brothers cartoons don’t stretch out each gag to breaking point and signpost exactly where the comedy’s supposed to be. Neither do they focus their humour at children: Chuck Jones’ Road Runner cartoons effectively do away with such niceties as storyline and dramatic tension (Wile Y Coyote’s booby traps never even begin to work, nor do they obey the rules of physics before they backfire). What is left is an absurdist comedy, with Wile Y Coyote as the existential hero with all of nature dropping anvils on his head. By contrast, the Asterix animations feature men in helmets pratfalling for 80 minutes and that’s it. All that’s lacking is a subtitle saying ‘laugh’.

Donate-a-film

I now have make one thing clear. These films are doing my head in and I'm not going to pay for any more of them. Currently I have Asterix and the Big Fight, Asterix in Britain, Asterix conquers America and the Live-action film, and that's about four films too many. Ergo: if you want film reviews of the Asterix films beyond those four mentioned, you'll have to give the films to me first! Not sell: give. And that's including post and packaging: I pay nothing! Copies are fine, however - I can play any sort of VHS tape, VCR or DVD.

Any one who sends me an original copy may well find it on Ebay the following week, while I try to claw back some compensation money for mental trauma caused by watching rubbish films.

For my part, I promise to review any (English language) Asterix film anyone gives me and to credit any benefactor on the site, maybe linking to their website (if it's not of an 'outre' nature).

Anyone who'd like to donate a film to the fine cause of having me peruse it with a calm and unprejudiced mind before slating it on this site should contact me by e-mail.

Criteria

Clearly, I need to use different criteria - than that for the books - to assess the films if I'm to deconstruct the unholy trinity of overstatement, pratfalling and lost-comic-opportunity that rules over them.

Following some meditation and alcoholic inspiration, I’ve come up with:

Talking Trash:

Have the English versions’ producers had a bet to recruit the most inappropriate voices possible to dub the lead characters? It sure seems that way. Who talks the talk and why they don’t deliver the goods?

‘It’s the way they tell ‘em!’

Here’s an old joke that doesn't work in print.

Q. What’s the first rule of comedy?

<Pause.> <Pregnant Pause.> <Long Pause.> <Very Long Pause.> <Why The Big Paws?> <Eternity of Silence.>

A. Timing.

The Asterix films have as much sense of timing as a five-quid Rolex from an Istanbul street hawker.

How do the films screw up the great jokes from the books? Overstatement, of course! Pratfalls, arch visuals, near-hysteric vocals and the omnipresent whooping-hollering-Romanball (a director’s favourite: one or more Romans form(s) a ball which careers along whooping and hollering until it hits and collapses on an obstacle, usually part of a Roman Fort's infrastructure. Here I offer the choice examples.

Europlop

Don’t get me wrong: I love European culture. I wouldn’t be running this site if I didn’t. It’s therefore a mystery to me how the continent that spawned philosophy, the dramatic arts, the Renaissance and western music could also come with that spawn of Satan (actually, no: he has the best tunes) known as Europop.

The Asterix films haven’t missed a trick here: just when you think things can’t conceivably get any worse, up - like Cacofonix - pops a musical number. Scratch that: music has nothing to do with it. It’s a Europop number: a ghastly, nauseating travesty of pop music that brings all but the deaf and Neil Sedaka fans out in nervous hives. Frankly, I’d expect any cinema auditorium to be swimming in semi-digested popcorn and hotdogs whenever these crop up. Here I explain why each ‘musical' number should henceforth be replaced with the John Cage Track 4.33’ of silence.

The Critics Rave...

What the reviewers at the Internet Movie Database have to say.