While it has very bad press and the feedback from some viewers is not very kind to it either, Asterix & Obelix The Middle Empire signs the best start of a French film for 10 years. It is Pathé, the producer, who reveals the first figures with 463,026 spectators during the first day of operation. Be careful all the same, on this score, it is necessary to count the 275,658 admissions made via the previews, since the production has been touring France for 15 days to present the film to the public, casting in the room as the icing on the the cake. If Guillaume Canet and Pathé can breathe a little, we have to see how the entries will behave in the weeks to come. Yes, the start is thunderous, but the word-of-mouth is unfortunately quite calamitous, the fault of a disappointing cinematographic result and especially not up to the 65 million which were injected into the production.
The French blockbuster can nevertheless rely on the winter holidays which will start for Zone A this weekend to try to bring as many people as possible back into theaters. Without forgetting that the film has a family aura that can appeal to children who want to discover the new live-action adventures of our Gallic duo, carried by guest-stars who can still have an influence on this young audience. For the rest, we obviously agree enough to see the extent of the cinematic disaster that this film is, with a scenario without interest, a non-existent narration, actors often next to their pumps, fights of a hallucinating poverty and a staging of great platitude.