The Romans discover they can easily invade Britain when they realise the Brits stop fighting after 5 PM, on weekends, and have tea-breaks in the middle of battles. This concept alone is so hilarious that it would be hard to make a bad film based on it, and the makers of this, the fifth Asterix film, do a pretty fair job with it.

'Asterix in Britain' is certainly one of the all-time classic Asterix books, so they had good material to work with, and they stuck to it pretty faithfully. The basic idea is that a single village of Britons hold out against the Romans while one of them - Asterix's cousin - shoots over the channel to Gaul to try and get help. He, Asterix and Obelix return with a barrel of magic potion, and most of the film consists of the Romans trying to stop them before they can get it to the village, or them trying to get it back off the Romans. There are some very funny scenes in this, mainly involving the heavy caricature of the Brits, who all say 'ey, wot', 'jolly good show', 'decent thing to do' and all those sorts of things. A great example of this is when Asterix and Co smash down the door of a suburban couple who are sitting drinking hot water, falsely believing this to be the address of someone who stole their barrel. The guy stoically continues to sip tea in his chair while explaining that actually one of the 'I's fell off the gate, and they're actually XVIII, not XVII.

The gauls are of course horrified by the fact that the Brits boil everything in mint sauce, drink warm beer, and generally remain completely unruffled no matter what happens (in an opening scene the Roman army are dumbfounded when the Brits announce in the middle of a battle that it's time for their tea-break, and go and sit down, completely ignoring them.)

All the same I still feel this movie could have been just a little funnier, and made more capital of the gloriously rich material in the bust-a-gut funny original book. They come close a couple of times - Obelix drunkenly declaring how much he loves Asterix while they're desperately trying not to attract attention while smuggling illicit cargo through the streets of Londinium is priceless both in the book and the film - but other moments don't quite seem to capture the greatness of the book.

I was a little disappointed that the general production quality and animation, though pretty good, weren't an improvement over 'Asterix Vs Caeser', and may actually have been a little poorer.

There are some rather odd irregularities, too. Shop signs in Britain are written in French, despite Asterix having to translate one of them for Obelix at one point. This is the first Asterix film where the Gauls actually have French accents (in the English version anyway), which contrast very nicely with the British accents, even though I don't particularly like Obelix's voice in this one. He sounds a bit too stupid. Asterix sounds great, though (I don't know who the British voice actor is. I believe it was Bill Oddie in the next movie, but this doesn't sound like him). Getafix doesn't sound so hot, but he isn't in it for long. The Romans, for some reason, all have American accents - which sort of works, but when they run into an Italian hotel owner, he actually has an Italian accent, so how does that make sense? When you join the army your accent changes?

It's a toss-up between 3 and 3.5 stars, but I'm leaning towards 3.5. If you're not an Asterix fan, take off a half. If you are, add one on. Most people who aren't familiar with the Asterix style, which is really very different from just about anything else I can think of, might find this film just doesn't gel for them. However, it's definately one of the best. If you want to test the waters, and I'd rate it just above 'Asterix Vs Caeser' as the place to start.

If you can't find the film, try and find the book. It's honest to God hilarious, even though it's forty years old now.

The film... not quite great, but darn good, and certainly much better than most of the earlier and later ones. I think Rene Goscinny would have approved.