In a series on bad French cinema, I couldn’t possibly overlook the multitude of live-action adaptations of Franco-Belgian comics or bandes dessinées (BDs). Your typical BD is a slim hardback of coffee table dimensions covering all genres on any conceivable subject. Owning one or several hundred is a sign of general culture. The mascot of this tradition is a two-headed Janus with Hergé’s Belgian adventurer Tintin on one side and René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s Asterix the Gaul on the other. If you have never heard of Asterix, he is a stocky little fellow who looks like an Aryan Mercury. He is always found in the company of his pal Obelix, who looks like what would result if Pippi Longstocking made sweet, sweet love to a beach ball.
Their adventures are based around one of the classic themes of French history: Losing a war. The year is 50 BCE, and Julius Caesar has conquered nearly all of Gaul—modern-day France and a few of its neighbors—as recorded in his celebrated primer for beginning Latin students, The Gallic War. The village of our ecdotically-named heroes is the one holdout. They are able to defend their patch of territory thanks to a magic potion developed by the local druid, Panoramix, which gives the drinker super-strength for ten minutes. Stories that take place in and around the Gaulish village alternate with volumes where Asterix and Obelix tour every corner of the ancient world.
Gaul may be divided into three parts, but the live-action Asterix series is divided into four (soon to be five; there are also ten animated films). In addition to being live action, the first four films are united by at least one other thing, the casting of renowned French actor Gerard Dépardieu in the role of Obelix.
Dépardieu (who won’t be returning for the fifth film) is not even the most famous actor to besmirch his name by appearing in one of these. A whole lot of familiar faces turn up here—not only super famous actors (and not just French ones!) who can’t possibly be this hard up for cash, but also many alumni of this very column.
So, I propose dividing my analysis of each film into two parts: “What the hell are you doing in this movie?” for celebrity appearances, and “I am not happy to see you” for those who have starred in a movie previously covered in this column (and a few who are making their debut).
Asterix and Obelix Take on Caesar (Astérix et Obélix contre César, Claude Zidi, 1999)
What the hell are you doing in this movie?
The first live-action Asterix film (from the director of The Jackpot!) has the most basic scenario possible. Caesar (Gottfried John, dubbed) menaces the Gaulish village, and the Gauls resist. That’s it. For some reason, the Romans speak with exaggerated Italian accents instead of historically accurate British accents. This has less to do with the equation Rome=Italy and more to do, I think, with the casting of Roberto “Pinocchio” Benigni in the role of Caesar’s aide de camp Lucius Detritus. What better source for a cartoon Italian accent than a cartoon Italian?
Detritus wants to be Caesar in the place of Caesar, and he takes over as the primary antagonist because the Asterix films are reticent about making JC an all-out villain. Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly happy to see him either, but he is probably the most internationally famous of the actors who appear in this film. Why he chose to do this as his next project after Life is Beautiful is a bit of a head-scratcher.
I am not happy to see you
Dépardieu was a fixture as Obelix, but Asterix—you know, the putative main character—was a revolving door. In the first two films he is played by Christian Clavier of the comedy troupe Le Splendid. In this column we encountered Clavier as the patriarch of the Verneuil family in the Serial (Bad) Weddings franchise. But Clavier is actually a good actor—and a funny one (see his work in 1993’s The Visitors… but not in any other films in that franchise). In general, he is a welcome presence and pretty obviously the best actor to take on the role of Asterix. At about the same time this film was made, however, both Depardieu and Clavier starred in a quality adaptation of Les Misérables (as, respectively, Jean Valjean and Thénardier), and, well, Asterix and Obelix Take on Caesar is no Les Misérables.
Beyond the casting, my main memories of this film are that it is obnoxiously loud and poorly paced. Bad pacing is a mainstay of this series, and part of the problem is the series tradition of ending every story with an overextended banquet scene, in this case, one where Obelix pines for his lady love Falbala (a regular in the BD who will never again appear in the films), and Asterix cheers him up by bringing an entire legion of Roman fuckbois for him to beat up.
Another fixture of the Asterix films—one in the series’ favor, even—is the cornball special effects. These most often occur whenever someone takes the magic potion. First, there is usually a silly, Looney Tunes reaction, then the Gauls go about punching Romans into the stratosphere.
Roberto Benigni gets this treatment near the end of the film, much to my delight. Caesar makes a pact with the Gauls, and, as we know, he returned to Rome and lived happily ever after.
Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre, Alain Chabat, 2002)
What the hell are you doing in this movie?
The first live-action Asterix was a financial success, but the sequel not only made bank but became a cult classic. This is, far and away, the best of the four, and no small part of that is giving the role of Cleopatra to la plus belle femme du monde, Monica Bellucci.
In terms of Italian actors in French comedies, this is a huge step up from Roberto Benigni. Marion Cotillard is slated to play Cleopatra in the fifth film (which is about China!), and I can’t help but think of that as a trade down.
Caesar this time is played by the film’s director, Alain Chabat, presumably so that he could give himself the direction, “Make out with Monica Bellucci.” The story begins with a lovers’ quarrel, during which Cleopatra pledges to build a palace for Caesar (a “Caesar’s Palace,” if you will) within three months to assert the might of the Egyptians in the face of Rome. She assigns this task to someone we’ve seen before…
I am not happy to see you
Functionally, the protagonist of this film is neither Asterix nor Obelix but the Egyptian architect Numérobis, played by Jamel Debbouze.
He was the director (and star) of Animal Kingdom: Let’s Go Ape, as well as the villain in Alad’2. I can’t shit on him too hard because, like Christian Clavier, I tend to enjoy his performances, especially when he plays a sad sack. This is the case here and emphatically not the case in the other two films. Poor Numérobis learns that he can build his palace in time if he can secure the Gauls’ magic potion to give the workers a boost. And so, fifteen minutes in, Asterix and Obelix are just shoehorned into the plot.
I was less happy to see some other French comics pop up, however briefly. Isabelle Nanty—Mrs. Tuche—appears as something of a union leader for the day laborers working on the palace. Chantal Lauby—Madame Verneuil from Serial (Bad) Weddings—shows up briefly as a Roman spy trying to decipher the secret of the magic potion. Then we have the character Caius Antivirus, whose face filled me with hate and revulsion.
I couldn’t figure out why, and then it hit me.
It’s Jean-Paul Rouve. Yes, this film has both Mr. and Mrs. Serial (Bad) Weddings AND Mr. and Mrs. Tuche.
I haven’t said a whole lot about the content of the movie, so here’s a brief rundown of its jokes. This movie, from 2002, has a Titanic joke. It has a Star Wars joke. It has a joke about how the Sphinx lost its nose. It has a Mona Lisa joke. Asterix falls in love with a servant girl named Guimieukis. At the end of the movie, he gives her a kiss. A fight between Jamel Debbouze and Gérard Darmon’s villainous Amonbofis (Lord, these names) is a pastiche of blaxploitation and/or kung-fu movies. There are groanworthy needle drops, the last of which is a cover of a Bangles song. I won’t tell you which one.
All of which leads up to the inevitable banquet scene, where Caesar and Cleopatra do, in fact, make out on screen. Having bested Caesar, she maintains her independence from Roman rule and lives happily ever after.
Asterix at the Olympic Games (Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques, Thomas Langmann and Frédéric Forestier, 2008)
What the hell are you doing in this movie?
At the time of its release, Asterix (but not Obelix) at the Olympic Games was the most expensive French film of all time—in fact, the most expensive non-English film. You can see where some of that money went. For example, the guy they hired to play Caesar.
That’s Alain Delon, star of such films as The Leopard (1963) and Le Samouraï (1967). If you didn’t know this, you could intuit it from his opening monologue, in which he compares himself to a leopard and a samurai. This version of Caesar—uniquely in all the live-action Asterixes—uses a salute that looks unnervingly like a Heil. He is even in the habit of saying Ave moi! Not only is that a shameless calque on Heil myself!, but it confirms my suspicion that the Romans are surrogate Nazis, and the whole Asterix mythos is about occupied France. But, if that’s the case, why do these stories always soft pedal the Romans, and Caesar in particular?
For, once again, Caesar is not the primary antagonist. That honor goes to his “son” Brutus, a deliberate historical inaccuracy coming from the source material that I just cannot tolerate. Marcus Junius “Et tu?” Brutus was in no way Caesar’s son, even by adoption. Caesar did have an adoptive son who would make a great target for satire, but I guess they couldn’t be fucked to make fun of Octavius. Brutus is played by Benoît Poelvoorde—the Man Bites Dog guy, that Benoît Poelvoorde—and he is trapped in a lame series of gags where he tries to murder his “father” to no avail, since Caesar has beefeaters for everything, and he is even willing to poison his own leopard.
That stupid effect, by the way, is my favorite thing in the film.
I am not happy to see you
Since it turns out I was kind of happy to see Christian Clavier and Jamel Debbouze, it’s time for some new blood in this section. Apparently, after hiring Alain Delon, there wasn’t enough left in the coffers to retain Clavier as Asterix. Instead, we get Clovis Cornillac. Who? Exactly.
Asterix and Obelix are barely characters in their own movie. They are here to support, Marx Brothers-style, a boring pair of lovers: their fellow Gaul Alafolix (Stéphane Rousseau) and the Greek princess Irina (Vanessa Hessler). Now, I cannot think of two things more closely associated with ancient Greece than monarchy and heterosexuality. A distant third might be the Olympic games, which is how Alafolix plans to win Irina from the hand of her betrothed, Brutus (sigh). Even though the opening narration states it’s still 50 BCE, which is not the beginning of an Olympiad.
Before long, we are introduced to the panel of Greeks in charge of the games, and they are headed by Élie Semoun.
It’s by sheer dumb luck that Élie Semoun has evaded these pages because he is a standby of bad French comedies, spearheading, for example, the Ducobu franchise, which I could have easily included here (it’s a BD adaptation, after all). His shtick is that he talks very quietly and THEN YELLS AT YOU. IT’S VERY ANNOYING.
I’ll skip through the actual meat of this frankly boring film and get to its banquet scene, which is somehow the best and worst part. Best, because it brings back Jamel Debbouze, who really livens things up. Unfortunately, he is the vehicle by which we are treated to a string of graceless cameos by famous athletes, including footballer Zinedine Zidane and basketball player Tony Parker. I feel that they could have been put to better use rather than help make this, the longest Asterix movie, even longer. For example, Zidane could have headbutted Brutus into the ground, and Parker could have saddled up to Princess Irina and told her he was single.
The very last scene shows Brutus on a slave galley. But no worries! He eventually did kill Caesar, and then he lived happily ever after.
Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia (Astérix et Obélix: Au service de sa majesté, Laurent Tirard, 2012)
What the hell are you doing in this movie?
A new film, a new Caesar. They got another classy actor, this time in the form of Fabrice Luchini, first seen sailing towards Britain with an enormous fleet.
He begins tearing shit up, sparking panic in the capital of Londinium (Which was built by whom? What have the Romans ever done for us?). We then cut to the British monarch, Cordelia, the legendary queen mentioned in The History of the Kings of Britain. That book is a pile of lies, but it made two important contributions to world literature. It popularized this King Arthur fellow, and it is the earliest attestation of the story of Cordelia’s father, King Lear. That she survived long enough to become queen might be a surprise to those familiar only with Shakespeare’s version, but that man had no respect for fake history. Neither does this film, since Cordelia would have lived about eight centuries before Caesar.
I’ve buried the lede. Cordelia is played by Catherine fucking Deneuve.
As you can probably guess from this image, this movie is aggressively disinterested in the state of Britain circa the first century BCE and more interested in poking fun at modern Brits. The opening credits feature punk rock and a Union Jack, and I knew immediately that this one wasn’t for me.
While this sort of anachronistic prodding at national stereotypes is bread and butter for the Asterix BD, it’s the first time it shows up in the movies. After all, Mission Cleopatra wasn’t about modern Egypt, and Olympic Games wasn’t about modern Greece. And yet here we are introduced to a nation of effete, sex-averse, tea-drinking ninnies who need help from the Gauls to fend off Caesar’s invasion (for once, he’s the main villain). They all speak French with an affected English accent. It gave me some insight into how Germans and Russians must feel when they watch Bond movies.
I am not happy to see you
This movie features three of my least favorite francophone actors, all of them in a side plot that feels utterly divorced from the main feature (because, in fact, it is based on a different Asterix BD than the rest of the film). It involves the Norman invasion of Britain, and while that wouldn’t happen for well over a millennium after this film takes place, I’m still too mad about the Brutus thing to care.
First up, we have Vincent Lacoste as Goudurix, the cowardly, womanizing Gaul that Asterix and Obelix are training to be a man. Lacoste is a decent actor, but he has a very punchable face. If you put him and, say, Pierre Niney side-by-side, I’m not sure which of the two I would punch first, but I would definitely punch him twice.
Next up we have Québécoise actress Charlotte Le Bon, whom I know primarily from skits she performed on Le Petit Journal, where I found her vulgar. She has since gone on to become a full-time movie actress, and this was her first movie role. She plays Ophelia, an English girl seduced by Lacoste’s character and then caught by Normans (putting Caesar, Cordelia, and an Ophelia in the same movie might make this the biggest Shakespeare crossover event of all time). Point: I stillhold a lot of ill-will towards her from those television sketches. Counterpoint: She is very good-looking, so I guess I am stuck in a Frollo/Esmeralda situation.
And then we have Dany Boon as a Norman raider who is captured and civilized by Le Bon’s Ophelia and her governess Miss Macintosh (Valérie Lemercier).
As with Élie Semoun, it is a minor miracle that Dany Boon is only showing up for the first time in this space. He is the director and star of several broad comedies from 2008’s Welcome to the Sticks up to last year’s coronavirus dramedy Stuck Together. I had contemplated dedicating an entire column to his work—he certainly deserves it—but I didn’t want to waste any more of my time thinking about him, much less watching his movies.
The entire segment, during which Asterix and Obelix hardly appear, is a distraction and feels like so much padding. Apart from this, the one scene that caught my attention is when Asterix comes face-to-face with Caesar, and the two men acknowledge for the first time in this continuity-challenged series that they have met before, although neither of them is played by an actor that had previously inhabited the role (Edouard Baer, who is now Asterix, was a minor character in Mission Cleopatra).
Anyway, Asterix and Obelix save the day once more, there’s another damnable banquet, and Cordelia lives happily ever after. So may you all.
Gavin McDowell is a Hoosier by birth and French by adoption. He received his doctorate in “Languages, History, and Literature of the Ancient World from the Beginning until Late Antiquity” and is currently investigating Aramaic translations of the Bible. He is supremely unqualified to talk about film. For more of his unprovoked movie opinions, see his Letterboxd account.
Bad French Cinema Index
Part 1: French Films with Famous Remakes
Part 2: French Animation
Part 3: Serial (Bad) Weddings
Part 4: Live-Action Fairy Tales
Part 5: The Tuche Family
Part 6: Asterix and Obelix