Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra

Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002) is about Cleopatra having a palace built in three months to spite Caesar. She makes a bet: the Egyptians can still build great things. She gives the job to an incompetent architect named Numerobis and three months to do it; if he fails he goes to the crocodiles. He goes to the Gauls for help, and Asterix, Obelix and the druid set up a building site in the desert. The film does not take the comic as it is; it rewrites the humour in the French comic tradition. Wordplay, absurd exchanges and characters talking as though they know they are in a film build its texture. Alain Chabat wrote, directed and played Caesar. Jamel Debbouze is at the centre as Numerobis and his improvisation makes up much of the dialogue. Gérard Depardieu plays Obelix, Christian Clavier Asterix and Monica Bellucci Cleopatra. The visual design is faithful to the comic's palette: bright, saturated, without shadow. It was the most watched film in France that year and is counted the most successful of the series. Much of the humour rests on French wordplay and some of it is lost in translation, which is why it means far less outside France. The scribe played by Edouard Baer is the most quoted thing in it. It runs 107 minutes. Good for: French comedy, comic adaptations, and family viewing. Less good for: the humour is very local and loses a great deal in translation.