Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion (4/10)
Well this was a letdown.
For context, the Asterix series was one of my go-to comics back in the day (similar vein as Tintin), though these days, at least in Oz, they've mostly faded. As in, go onto comic shelves in the library, and stuff like Tintin and Asterix are comparatively rare, replaced with superheroes or entire manga series. I'd joke "these Romans are crazy," but then, the Italians are doing quite well with Geronimo Stilton, so that doesn't work. But hey, damn it, some of us still remember the indominatable Gauls of a certain village that's always in 50BC, so damn it, I wanted to like this film but...I couldn't. Because it's kinda bad, actually.
I'll get one thing out of the way - if you're not familiar with Asterix, good luck understanding the context of the film, because it does a terrible job of explaining anything. Second thing out of the way is that despite "Asterix" being in the name, Asterix and Obelix aren't the main characters, and you could remove them from the film, and little would change in terms of plot or character development. Now, this isn't bad by itself, but if they aren't the protags, who is? Well, Getafix is, sort of, but even then, the film just never stops moving forward, never stops making hit-and-miss jokes that the characters are spread so thin, it's hard to get invested in many of them, and the film just never slows down, nor do the characters shut up.
It's worth mentioning the villain is another druid named Demonix (hardy hah hah) who's set up as a villain even though he's kinda got a point. He wants the magic potion, the characters object on the basis it would be too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands, yet Demonix points out that Getafix could use the potion to liberate all of Gaul instead of residing in one single village, and the thing is, he's got a point. I know that the premise of Asterix is that status quo is king, it's played for laughs 90% of the time (and good laughs too), but if you actually look at the situation, what's stopping Asterix and co. from using the magic potion to actually liberate Gaul, and indeed, most of Europe? I don't think this is a problem with the comics, but here, the issue comes to the forefront, yet never addressed in a satisfactory manner.
So, yeah. The film's a letdown. The jokes don't work, the plot doesn't work, the characters are thin, it's close to 90 minutes of yelling at the camera. Much as I wanted to like this movie, I just couldn't. It even risked going down to a 3/10, but managed to scrape into 4/10 territory based on a few genuine chuckles. So, yeah...not good.
