This is the first of the Asterix films and, I would say, the weakest. It is a very faithful translation of the first Asterix book. What this means is that many of the hallmarks of later Asterix books- the satire, the anachronisms, the well-developed cast of regular characters- are not present.
Such humour as survives is rather weak. Excruciating pun names, such as Romans Phonus Balonus, Marcus Sourpuss and Petroleum Pumpus, are much in evidence, and attention is drawn to them wherever possible. There is a lot of cartoonish violence, but this becomes repetitive.
There seems to have been a problem in translating this into English, as much of the dialogue seems to have been simply chopped up and fitted in wherever there is lip movement in the original. The result is that sentences are often rushed or split awkwardly, so one is presented with odd lines like, "He wanted to... become emperor!" and "What a brilliant... idea that is!"
To add more translation confusion, there is an opening segment with pictures of the characters and their names. Unfortunately, this has been left in French. So the bard Stopthemusix (remember those awful puns?) is introduced as Assurancetourix at the beginning, and so on.
While it's faithful to the book, it's not a film that you should watch unless you really, really like Asterix. And then only for curiosity value.
Such humour as survives is rather weak. Excruciating pun names, such as Romans Phonus Balonus, Marcus Sourpuss and Petroleum Pumpus, are much in evidence, and attention is drawn to them wherever possible. There is a lot of cartoonish violence, but this becomes repetitive.
There seems to have been a problem in translating this into English, as much of the dialogue seems to have been simply chopped up and fitted in wherever there is lip movement in the original. The result is that sentences are often rushed or split awkwardly, so one is presented with odd lines like, "He wanted to... become emperor!" and "What a brilliant... idea that is!"
To add more translation confusion, there is an opening segment with pictures of the characters and their names. Unfortunately, this has been left in French. So the bard Stopthemusix (remember those awful puns?) is introduced as Assurancetourix at the beginning, and so on.
While it's faithful to the book, it's not a film that you should watch unless you really, really like Asterix. And then only for curiosity value.