The Asterix movies take place in 50 BC, during the Roman conquest of Gaul. The inhabitants of one Gaulish village hold off the Romans with strength given to them by a magic potion - so much strength, in fact, that Roman-bashing is something of a sport to them. Amongst the villagers are the series' main characters - a dwarf-like warrior named Asterix and his portly, slow-witted friend Obelix.

Sadly, the first movie (directed by Ray Goosens, whose previous film was Pinocchio in Outer Space) lacks almost all of the original comic's charm. The first sign that something's wrong is the opening sequence, which has Asterix and Obelix beating up Romans in a poorly-coreographed, sub-Popeye fight scene while blaring trumpet music plays.

Round about the best example of the differences between the comic and movie is the scene in which Asterix drinks the potion for the first time. In the comic he simply shakes Panoramix by the hand; the druid hops into the air in pain and scolds him. But this was apparently too subtle for the film, in which Asterix runs outside and spends a full twenty seconds bouncing around pushing trees over, before shouting "it works, oh druid, it works!" and running away with his arms in the air, cackling wildly.

The later movies in the series showed some vast improvement, but you're better off giving this one a miss.

This is the first Asterix movie, produced in 1967, and it's really for die-hard fans only. to a large degree the problem isn't with the film adaptation. It actually has rather good animation for a minor 1960's studio, and you certainly can't accuse it of not being faithful to the book - in fact it's almost slavishly faithful to it. And that's the problem. The first Asterix book wasn't really all that great, and most Asterix fans regard it as a sort of introduction to the characters, which having read once they don't bother with again. There is little if any of the satire and adult humour of the later books - which is ironic, because when they started making movies of those books they actually departed from the original story more often than not, and left the sophisticated humour out anyway.

Asterix the Gaul introduces us to the inhabitants of the little Gaulish village which is holding out against the Roman invaders in 50 BC, thanks to their magic potion. The Romans kidnap Getafix* the druid to learn the secret of the magic potion, and it's up to the diminuative warrior Asterix to get him back.

* Getafix is called 'Panoramix' here, probably because 'Getafix' is an obvious drug reference. Similarly The roman camp of Laudanum (a drug derived from opium) is called 'Homsweethum' or something like that.

The film is certainly not an utter mess. It's faithful to it's source, decently animated and mildly amusing. It's just that it has little style or panache, almost none of the more satisfying humour of the later books, Obelix (by far the most popular Asterix character) is hardly in the story, and whereas it does introduce you to the characters, you'd probably be better off skipping ahead to one of the next few films.

Asterix's creators, Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo weren't even aware that this movie was being made until they were invited to watch it. Things would change the next year, when the pair got their hands on the reins as director and producer for 'Asterix and Cleopatra', and 1976's 'Twelve Tasks of Asterix'.