We finally get there – with a last-reel dust-up set to Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round, a cue to quicken any pulse – but it’s all too clearly the kind of family film that has to creep out towards the end of the holidays, once Pixar has loosened its grip on the marketplace and parents are casting around for anything to get the kids to sit still. Under-10s who don’t have an MBA will want far less digimated R&D and way more Roman-thumping. Getafix’s succession pushes Asterix and Obelix to the sidelines the quest to improve the formula of the wise elder’s signature elixir is a near-complete non-event in terms of action or spectacle. If it doesn’t sound like an Asterix movie, it at least looks like one, with conglomerations of pixels that bear closer resemblance to the original illustrations than did Depardieu in a fat suit, and a pleasing contrast between the rough-edged pencil backstories and the slickly processed main business that feels like the animators tipping their collective chapeaux to their inspiration.īusiness it is, though, in the main: what’s most striking is how grounded the plot is in boardroom thinking. The deft cultural and linguistic gags Goscinny and Uderzo once traded in are mostly lost in the homogenisation. The reason being he’s worried he’s getting on in years after a disastrous fall from a tree trying to get an ingredient for the. This time around they’re off on an adventure to find the successor to village druid Getafix. The brand fell into pantomimic disrepair with those live-action super-productions that cast Gérard Depardieu as Obelix shortly before the actor packed up for Russia it rallied, briefly, with 2016’s The Mansions of the Gods, a brisk, spirited digimation lent additional pep by the ragbag British comedians (Matt Berry, Dick and Dom) drafted in for the UK theatrical version.Īlas, the English-language dub of this follow-up has been pitched with mercenary precision at the US market: hand-drawn inserts strive to explain who the key players are, and our indomitable Gauls now sound like actors manning the background of a Hallmark Channel melodrama. Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion follows the continuing adventures of Asterix, Obelix and their little village. A t risk of sounding like Grumpycritix, the movies have treated Asterix almost as poorly as they have Tintin.