Blockbuster à la française par excellence, the new version of Asterix worn by Guillaume Canet passes under the scrutiny of critics. Press review of Asterix and Obelix and the Middle Empire.
The new episode of the adventures of Asterix and Obelix is awaited with impatience and concern in French cinema. Its success or failure at the box office will undoubtedly determine the future vitality of French cinema productions. He’s his director. Guillaume Canet, who says it regularly in interviews. “I am well aware that this film is also eagerly awaited by the profession. It is very important that cinema picks up again, that films like this can generate enthusiasm and make people want to return to the cinema.” It is still necessary, of course, to offer a film that will please the public but also, to a lesser extent, the critics. The press begins to deliver its criticisms concerning Asterix and Obelix and the Middle Kingdom. Here is our press review! Note that not all media outlets have released their reviews for the film yet, so we’ll be fleshing out this review as we go along.
“All is not successful” announces Premiere
The cinephile magazine First praises the fact that The Empire of the Middle did not choose the same path as the previous Asterix films: “it does not adapt an existing album and prefers to appropriate the places to keep only the essential equipment (fights, banquets, pirates and Julius Caesar)”. However, “everything is not successful (the kung-fu fights, the parade of accessory stars, from Angèle to McFly and Carlito, the strange sluggishness of certain scenes)”. Guillaume Canet also chooses “to put the figure of Asterix and Obelix back at the heart of the story” unlike his predecessors, which allows him to create a “more personal” but also “more human” film, which ” prevents it from collapsing under its digital deluge.”
“A peak of old-fashionedness” for Large Screen
With the rating of 1 star out of 5 possible, Widescreen clearly did not appreciate this new version of Asterix in the cinema, which is described here as “a summit of mediocrity laid by boomers”. The website criticizes, for example, the many uninteresting cameos but also the script of the film “both too much and not enough written” as well as the staging and “its static camera which agrees with the little latitude given to the film. ‘improvisation”. The proposal of Gilles Lellouche in Obélix was appreciated by Ecran Large but “lThe rest of the cast is weighed down by a catastrophic direction of actors “especially Jonathan Cohen. In short, Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom is “never funny and poor in terms of manufacturing”. “A nice waste of money that constantly seems to be twenty years behind.”
“Better tied than Asterix at the Olympic Games” for Les Echos
The echoes published their review of Asterix and Obelix and the Middle Kingdom. The newspaper finds there “if not the brilliance, at least the tone of Goscinny and Uderzo” with a quite particular style “of piling up puns and reading the contemporary world in the mirror of a fantasized antiquity.” The comparison holds with the less good episodes of the saga but not with the best, namely Mission Cléopâtre by Alain Chabat. “Suite of more or less wacky scenes, the whole thing turns out to be better put together than the catastrophic “Asterix at the Olympic Games” […] Unfortunately, he lacks two or three very good gags, a few truly memorable bursts of laughter, to reach the level of Alain Chabat’s “Mission Cleopatra”.
“The duo works” according to France Info
In the columns of the website of France Info, we can read a review that compares, as viewers of the film will no doubt do, The Middle Kingdom to the previous Asterix films. France Info also notes that “Guillaume Canet draws from each of these predecessors” with an “endless list of cameos and appearances” as with Chabat. “Like Zidi, the duo works. The complicity between director Guillaume Canet and actor Gilles Lellouche is old.” The continuous news site also specifies that “the special effects are humble but without lack of taste.”