Directed by Frédéric Forestier and Thomas Langmann, the third French live-action film about the indomitable Gaul has a new Asterix, Clovis Cornillac, but retains Gérard Depardieu as Obelix. Like the book of the same name, it tells of Asterix's efforts to outdo the Roman team at the Olympics, a mission that runs into problems when our hero's magic potion is (understandably) deemed a performance-enhancing drug. What's new in this version is a pair of young lovers, whose story helps to drag out the film to a length unjustified by the mediocre entertainment on offer. Older viewers might enjoy seeing Alain Delon hamming it up as Julius Caesar (he looks like Robert Kilroy-Silk), but classicists will be irked to find this Caesar presented as the father of his assassin-to-be, Brutus. Rewriting history is what the Asterix stories are all about, of course, but this distortion (which I'm pretty sure doesn't appear in any of the books) is annoyingly drastic and pointless.
PG, 116 mins