Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra

Great Britain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. Languages:o English (subtitles)o English (Dolby Digital 5.1)o French (Dolby Digital 5.1) Synopsis:The Egyptian Queen Cleopatra bets against the Roman Emperor, Julius Caesar, that her people are still great, even if the times of the Pharaohs has long passed. She bets (against all logic) to be able to build a new palace for Caesar within three months. Since all her architects are either busy otherwise or too conservative in style, this ambivalent honour falls to Numerobis. He is to build the palace and be covered in gold, if not, his fate is to be eaten by crocodiles. Numerobis calls upon an old friend to help him out: The fabulous Druid Panoramix (Miraculix in other language versions) from Gallia, who brews a fantastic potion that gives supernatural strength. In order to help and protect, Asterix and Obelix accompany the old Druid on his journey to Egypt. When Julius Caesar gets wind of the project succeeding, he has the building site attacked by his troops in order to win the bet and not lose his face. But he hasn't counted on Asterix and Obelix. Special Features:o Interactive Menuo Scene Access Product Description

An undiscovered classic

What a superb film! An amazing recreation of a favorite Asterix story. Characters and action are brought to life with excellent special effects translating cartoon reality into a 3D world. If your french is pretty good, then go to Amazon.fr and search for "Mission Cleopatre edition prestige" and make sure you get the 2 DVD set: this will give you a most remarkable second disc with interviews, but above all a full length documentary on the making of this film. And you'll find that Amazon.fr have all your details at hand and that ordering is as easy as from Amazon.com. I have watched this documentary twice now with great enjoyment and have gained immense admiration for the military precision necessary to make a film of this complexity. The reason I recommend the French 2-DVD set for french speakers is because of the lack of english subtitles, although my wife still enjoyed the documentary since most of the content is visual and obvious. September 11, 2008

Melodrama Cleopatra

"Mission Cleopatra" is more melodramatic & colourful than the first live Asterix film. Based on "Asterix and Cleopatra", the 1965 French comic. Cleopatra hires Asterix, Obelix and Getafix to help build Caesar's Egyptian palace. There's favorites like the pirates and Dogmatix, plus new jokes. Watched it in French, pretty enjoyable. It went on a bit toward the end, but I liked it. February 5, 2007

A positive surprise

I am not even sure why I rented Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, I had so little hopes for it after the dreadful first live-action Asterix film. But I'm glad I did, for it turned out to be a terrific film.

For one thing it has Monica Bellucci as Cleopatra. She is just a gorgeous woman, and the really skimpy outfits she wears in this movie make me think it was not aimed at a kids audience! It's actually surprisingly sexy, and she is not the only really pretty woman in the film either.

For another thing it is very funny, not just keeping many of the original jokes from the graphic novel, but also introducing many new ones, surprisingly successful.

And last but not least, the film looks fantastic. This is not your father's French movie, this is a big budget feature, and it looks like it. The set designs, the landscapes, the costumes, everything is pure eye candy. I'm not kidding.

Warmly recommended.
(If you get the DVD with two versions, watch the original French version, the English-language one has 20 minutes cut from it, and is not well dubbed.) January 21, 2007

The best Asterix film - in two very different versions

For those not in the know, the Asterix books are a hugely successful series of comic books about a village of indomitable Gauls who resist Caesar's invasion thanks to a magic potion that renders them invulnerable supermen. There have been several animated features (only one of them, The Twelve Tasks of Asterix really capturing the wit and spirit of the books despite being an original screen story) before a perfectly cast Christian Clavier and Gerard Depardieu took the lead roles in two big-budget live action adaptations that proved colossally successful throughout Europe but made no impression whatsoever in the English-speaking world.

This follow-up to Asterix and Obelix Take On Caesar/Asterix et Obelix Contre Cesar is easily the most successful attempt to get the books mixture of slapstick, anachronisms and highbrow classical humorous asides to the screen, mixing classical references (such as a great Raft of the Medusa sight gag or the Sphinx's broken nose inspiring Depardieu's Obelix to quote Cyrano de Bergerac), alongside more modern pop-culture references - mobile phones, Star Wars and even The Benny Hill Show. It's also incredibly spectacular and lavishly designed, putting many recent epics to shame. Some of the subtitles, however, leave a little to be desired, with joke names such as Matthieukassovix changed to Lennykravix for Anglophone consumption (very jarring when you can still hear the originals), but that's a minor complaint compared to the Miramax cut also included here. Not all of it works, but it's still great fun.

Despite paying a reputed $45m for both films, in a classic case of buyer's remorse Miramax completely re-edited the film (at least 21 minutes gone) and crudely dubbed it into English. Maybe Harvey Weinstein mistook it for a Hong Kong movie. Whereas Asterix et Obelix Contre Cesar was lovingly dubbed into English from a particularly good translation script by Terry Jones but otherwise left unaltered, that sort of thing really isn't the Miramax way. The results ain't good.

Aside from the voices for Gerard Depardieu and Monica Bellucci just seeming very, very wrong, a lot of the classical references are gone (the Raft of the Medusa and Cyrano gags among them), the pirates are reduced to a single sequence, alongside anything that seems too French or might slow the picture down, with the result that the first 20 minutes are now a real slog. Several punchlines to sequences are missing, Depardieu's part has been trimmed (his part was already fairly small because of his serious health problems during the shoot: the US version has been partially digitally regraded to change the unhealthy pallor of his face in the original!), and as usual with dubbing, because literal translations into English don't fit properly, lines are either rushed so much they're not funny anymore or the dialogue has been changed completely. A couple of these changes are admittedly funny, like one character dreaming of a world in which he could move his lips in French and hear the words in English, so it's not quite a total disaster, but very disappointing.

Still, Pathe's UK DVD gives you the choice of both versions in excellent transfers, even if it is at the cost of any extras (the French DVD was a lavish two-disc set, but without English subtitles). But you'd definitely be better off sticking to the uncut subtitled French version even if you're buying it for the kids - tell them think of it as a reading a book with moving pictures!
July 20, 2006

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