This is more like it. A big improvement over the first two Asterix films. Goscinny had concentrated on writing the books (or albums, or whatever you prefer to call them) and had taken an eight year break between directing 'Asterix and Cleopatra' and this one. In that time his and Uderzo's directorial skills had improved a lot, and 'Twelve Tasks' doesn't suffer (much) from the tedious slapstick and brawling of the previous film. There's also really only one song, which is mostly musical, whereas 'Asterix and Cleopatra' had some truly wretched songs.

The trademark Goscinny wit is here too, with the characters breaking the 'fourth wall' several times and addressing the audience. I particularly like the opening sequence where the narrator is telling us how in 50 BC all of Gaul was covered in forest, as the camera pans passed a pile of junk including a mattress and a TV set. "No", the narrator complains, "I said _fifty_ BC", whereupon the junk vanishes. Now this would have been fairly funny anyway, but I just thought it was hilarious that, because of the inflection on 'fifty' he was inferring that if it had been perhaps 40 or 30 BC it would have been alright. I don't know whether that was intentional, but it was funny anyway.

Anyway, 'Twelve Tasks' is the only Asterix film so far which isn't based on an existing book, but instead was a wholly original screenplay. This is a good thing in theory, because it gives Goscinny the chance to avoid those elements of the books which don't translate well to film, but not so good in that the story itself isn't remarkably original. Caeser challenges the Gauls to complete 12 tasks, ala Hercules, whereupon they will either surrender or become rulers of Rome. They are accompanied by a delightfully droll scribe who keeps track of their achievements (that is, Asterix and Obelix's. Everyone else stays home).

It's a much more entertaining movie than either of the first two, but not so much because it's a great story. More because it's simply told more pleasingly, with a much better grasp of narrative flow. Nevertheless it does drag in a few places, there are only a few scenes which are truly laugh out loud funny, and the film unfortunately still isn't rid of some of the tedious tropes of the earlier films - particularly scenes of people being beaten up for five minutes at a time. It isn't offensive or anything. It just isn't funny either. Come to think of it, the books aren't immune to this problem either, though it seems to work better on paper than on celluloid. The films could have done with less of this, and more of the funny one-liners (Caeser to Brutus: "Stop playing with that knife. You'll hurt somebody one day.")

The English voice cast this time are really excellant. It's a shame nobody seems to have a clue who the heck they are. A couple of the voices are very familiar, and I'm sure there are some well known British actors in there.

Still, overall I was a little disappointed with my second viewing of this movie since it was released. It's not a bad movie, and the first Asterix film I could imagine a non-Asterix fan actually enjoying, but it falls a fair way short of greatness.

Unfortunately this was also the last time that Rene Goscinny, the creator of Asterix, would have a chance to get it right. Within a year he would be dead, and it would be nearly ten years until someone tackled another movie without him.

(To North American readers who are bemused by all of this, this movie does do a reasonable job of explaining the basic scenario and introducing the major characters, so it ought to make some kind of sense if you get to see it)

A fairly good film.

Incidentally, a small warning for people who are offended by such things. There is an extremely blatant 'erection take' (for want of a better term) at the end, where the Roman scribe is being groped by a Siren/Priestess, and his glass of wine erupts about forty feet into the air. Tex Avery would probably have liked it if he saw it anyway (come to think of it, it could have been worse. The probably never-to-be-filmed 'Asterix in Switzerland' has a recurring sequence set at an orgy)