Astérix aux jeux olympiques

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.

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.

I just watched the English translation of this movie, and I don't think it was as bad as people made it out to be.

Of the three live-action Asterix movies, none has really come close to capturing the charm of the comics (or even the animated features). "Mission Cleopatra" came closest, I think. The first movie was just miserable.

"Asterix at the Olympic Games" was a fun, if not perfect, attempt at capturing the magic of the books. My biggest complaint was that although its an Asterix and Obelix movie, it doesn't really seem to be about them. They don't even make an appearance until about 15 minutes in. It lends a certain degree of ridiculousness (and not in an amusing way) to the movie to have this enormous title screen that says "Astérix Aux Jeux Olympiques," and then have the entire opening act of the movie be about someone other than Asterix.

The CGI in the movie was also off-putting. Its used to make many of the more cartoony effects of the film, which is good, but it was really over-used in many scenes that didn't require them. Also, it wasn't really good CGI either.

The plot was nothing special, but it was amusing. It had some good jokes, and the characters were pretty fun. It was nothing like the comic ("Asterix at the Olympic Games") which it was based on, but I didn't expect it to be.

There were, apparently, tons of guest appearances by European (I think) athletes, none of whom I recognize -- being wholly ignorant on the topic of sports in this country or any other. I think these probably stuck in the throat of many people, who might have known who they were.

Anyway, I think they are starting to get the hang of how to make live-action Asterix movies, but I really do wish that the story had been more involved with Asterix, himself.

The movie has some very good parts, but unfortunately, it has more boring parts. It's big, and it made me wanna fall asleep a lot of times.. If they had cut all he stupid, with no reason, long parts, this would have been a great movie. I know that ASTERIX had always been a great comic. And it's a good reason to made me wanna see the movie. I expected something better for the movie, and so will you. The actors who play Astérix and Panroamix(druid) are different from the last two Astérix movies, and they are terrible. The don't feel like the original Astérix actors, but more like some random actors they picked up, and dressed in the right clothes. The humor is boring, because it's the same stupid "funny" thing all the time. It was pretty funny when Numérobis acted stupid at "Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre", but at this movie it's not.

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.