“Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion”

A film which is not, as most talks of it on the Internet would have you believe, Asterix and the Secret of the Magic Potion. Huh. I wonder why, actually, because it's a much better title.

This latest installements in the comical Gaul's animated adventure is the first since 1978's outstanding Twelve Tasks of Asterix not to be based on a corresponding comic book, and that had an original script by René Goscinny himself, so this (written by director Alexandre Astier) is in a sense the first truly theatres-only Asterix story. How does it fare?

Well, as a story, it is a strange crash between modern animation's tastes and the Asterix universe — the result hangs together well enough as a standalone feature, but there's a strange disconnect between the elements that are truly faithful to the continuity of the comics (such as a cameo by Aplusbégalix, the renegade chieftain from The Big Fight) and the modern humor, the modern pace of the storytelling, and most importantly the nature of the villain, an outright sorcerer in a way Getafix/Panoramix never was in Goscinny and Uderzo's conception. I should also mention the nature of the climax is, to say the least, not something you could imagine in an Asterix comic-book… the one with aliens apart, of course, but that… thing… really shouldn't count. That being said, albeit in a very different way, Twelve Tasks's story really didn't feel like one of the comics either, so let's be lenient. I shall be less lenient of the shameless clickbaity nature of the title, for while the passing on of the recipe is admittedly a big part of the storyline, the actual recipe itself is not given to us as the advertising tricked us into hoping. 

That bsaid, albeit in a very different way, Twelve Tasks's story really didn't feel like one of the comics either, so let's be lenient. What of the animation? It is CGI, and that loses it some points in my book, but for what it is it's very well-done. The human characters have a vaguely blocky look to them that reminds me of a high-quality video game's cutscenes more than of a film, but the movements itselfare very solid, the designs of the new characters are great, and there's some really nice effectswork in there too; I love how they did the Magic Potion, which never really had a standard appearance before now, that I know of. This one is likely to become the gold standard from now on (and the use of the word 'gold' is quite deliberate).  

As concerns the cast (I speak only of the French cast; being French, I had little incentive to track down the English dub of all things)… oh my. Bernard Alane is back as Panoramix and does quite good, though he takes some getting used to, being very much unlike the previous Panoramixes of the cartoons. But the absence of Roger Carel as Asterix is very sorely felt, and his replacement Christian Clavier, fresh off butchering the role of the Count of Champignac in another Franco-belgian-comic film (the dire Spirou & Fantasio live-action film), isn't even remotely up to the task. 

The one true stand-out in the cast is Daniel Mesguich as the villainous Sulfurix, a character who is best described as “the Soothsayer, except actually magical”. The character is well-designed and well-thought-out, with an interesting backstory and motivation (even if it's not kept coherent the whole way through; being that his thing is that he wants to spread use of the Magic Potion to all of Gaul so that it can take over Rome and end all wars forever, the movie struggles to explain why he ends up allying himself to the Romans, something apparently done only so Caesar could be in the movies for a few minutes because we gotta have Caesar in any Asterix picture whatsoever now), and his voice is a masterful effort, even managing to sell a few dodgy lines along the way. I should also point out that while the voice he uses there couldn't be more difference, I get the impression that a Carel-accurate voice would totally have been within Mesguich's ability, and that we got freakin' Clavier instead just makes me so mad. 

There's also one Lévanah Solomon as the kid Pectine, who isn't very deeply characterized and seems to exist mostly as a setup for other, better stories about her. Certainly she's more of the concept “Panoramix's youthful-inventor apprentice” than she is a fully-realized character for now, and she feels a little bit shoehorned in the plot. Not wholly bad at all, just… a little fuzzy around the edges. Solomon herself is pretty good, if nothing stratospheric. 

So that's Secret of the Magic Potion — certainly not the new Twelve Tasks of Asterix, but some of the voice cast aside, a pretty fun adventure, and as good an occasion as any to return to the Gaulish village while the comic authors take their time to get the new book together. 

Post-Scriptum:

• Instead of a full-on comic adaptation, the movie is getting a picture book adaptation. Kind of lame, but at least, the cover looks gorgeous.