Mortadelo & Filemon: Mission Implausible

Two hopeless agents, Mortadelo and Filemón, have been thrown out of their own agency. When a criminal organisation threatens the city with a secret substance, the pair are recalled. They put on disguises, always the wrong ones, and every plan goes wrong. The subject is not espionage but carrying the physical gag of the comic strip into cinema. The characters are flattened and reshaped, weights fall on their heads, and none of it does permanent damage; the narrative does this without taking any of it seriously. The form is entirely motion capture and computer animation. The actors wear no costumes; their movement is recorded and the characters are rebuilt with the proportions of the comic. This was the first major Spanish production made with the technique. The source is the comic series Francisco Ibáñez created in 1958 and drew for more than half a century, a body of work almost everyone in Spain read as a child. Javier Fesser had already filmed the same characters in live action in 2003; this second attempt is fully animated. It was named best animated film at the Goya awards. Who it is for: people who know the comic and like broad physical comedy. Who it is not for: anyone unfamiliar with it; most of the jokes rest on fifty years of accumulation and on Spanish everyday speech.