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Rating: Strange days and bad thoughts, I stop working at 7 a.m. and after forty minutes of traffic, I arrive at my small apartment just outside the walls of a little snobbish northeastern city (forgive the neologism), I should go to sleep but I don't even feel like it, too many thoughts crowd my thirty-year-old adolescent mind...
So I stay there and mess around, watch the news? Naaa! I don't care about the world outside right now... Read something? Naaa! Too much effort after a night of work, I wouldn't understand anything, watch a DVD... mmm... yes, let's do that! I quickly browse through my video library: too deep, too much effort, too many mental distractions, SPQR...
They Are Crazy, These Romans.. but yes, it's been ages since I last watched it... "Les 12 Travaux d'Asterix" begins to keep me company with its typically French humor (which is absolutely naive and based on a terribly formal silliness), its fairly slow pace (especially at the beginning) tries more than once to make me fall into the arms of Orpheus, but I resist and am pleasantly carried through the various episodes (it's not an episodic film but each task is so solid in its script that it could easily be watched and appreciated on its own), memorable the challenge against Cylindric the German and truly entertaining the one with the cooking of the Giants (with the discovery of pommes frites 1500 years before!).
So I get excited, as I did as a child, about the adventures of Asterix and Obelix who, to honor a bet made with Caesar (at stake, the life of the Gallic village that always and in any case resists the Roman invasion against the dominion of the same empire), must prove they are divine and thus, like Hercules, face 12 terrible labors (reviewed for the occasion)... I won't reveal anything about the ending also because I think it's quite predictable, given that our heroes have on their side the proverbial Gallic cunning and the potent potion prepared by the druid Getafix.
The film is from 1976 (or thereabouts, correct me if I'm wrong), so the animation can often seem dated but ultimately the effect is decidedly romantic, and moreover, small gems often emerge, like the almost "psychedelic" references found in the trial of the Cave of the Beast or the House That Drives You Crazy, or those decidedly exotic (but not noisy) ones in the Island of the Priestesses of Pleasure. As a curiosity, it can be said that it is the first film in the series not based on a comic album, in fact, Goscinny conceived it directly for the screen and later a version to read was made.
An immensely enjoyable film born from the imagination of two authors who never give up on the taste for paradox (both of place and time) and who created a humor that set a precedent, and in my opinion, still does, even if many are ashamed to admit it...
84 minutes that glide smoothly, smoothly through many smiles (big laughs never, but it's the French style, oops Gallic, By Toutatis!) and even some right reflection, now some bad thoughts are gone, I can go to bed...
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