To date, there have been 15 released film adaptations of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s beloved Asterix stories, a dozen of which are animated — including this latest CG version, the second from directors Louis Clichy and Alexandre Astier (who did 2014’s The Mansions Of The Gods). Yet The Secret Of The Magic Potion is only the second to not be based in any way on the storylines contained within Goscinny and Uderzo’s original albums. And judging by its contents, here’s hoping it’s the last.
A frustratingly patchy, irritatingly hyperactive, mostly directionless episodic scramble.
To be fair, it asks questions that may have lurked at the back of many a young mind while ploughing happily through the Asterix oeuvre: why doesn’t Getafix (Innes) simply give the rest of the Gauls his ultra-energising brew? Why doesn’t he share his recipe? What happens when he dies? These posers form an encouraging starting point, the movie opening with the sprightly druid tumbling from a tree — something druids never do, apparently — and being painfully reminded of his mortality.
However, from there it descends into a frustratingly patchy, irritatingly hyperactive, mostly directionless episodic scramble. Getafix dominates the running time, yet undergoes no further development as a character. The film’s title hero Asterix (Kramer) is barely in it, bimbling around the sidelines until a clumsily conceived flounce sees him storming off, only to spend the next several scenes tied to a tree. Even the burly but sensitive Obelix (Harth) — most fans’ favourite — hardly features, with more attention mystifyingly given to self-important fishmonger Unhygienix (Jason Simpson), who tries to make his own magic potion, and bland bad guy Demonix (Mike Shepherd), who’s long harboured a grudge against Getafix. Meanwhile, a promising thread involving a smart, resourceful village girl named Pectin (Fleur Delahunty) is inexplicably left dangling.
Clichy and Astier’s attempt to do something different from other _Asterix_es unmoors them from the strong source material and leaves them running, very fast and noisily, in circles around a narrative cul-de-sac. The animation is solid, its bold, bright style at least living up to the original strip, and there is one superb visual flourish, when a flashback is rendered entirely in scratchy graphite. But their new ingredients are so badly mixed, they’ve lost most of this potion’s magic.