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Asterix and Obelix are assigned the task of making a real
man out the Chief's nephew, Justforkix, who has just arrived
from Parisium. Meanwhile the Vikings have landed in Gaul,
determined to find a "champion of fear" who will,
as their seer has promised, teach them to fly. When Justforkix
is abducted by the Vikings Asterix and Obelix must chase after
him all the way to the frozen North...
Asterix
and the Vikings is
the latest screen outing for René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's
most famous creation. Based on the book Asterix and the
Normans (first published in serial form in 1966) the film
never quite manages to hit the heights the book did.
Growing
up I was a huge fan of the Asterix series of books.
The start of this movie seemed pretty promising, but sadly
too much is made of the love story between Justforkix and
Abba, the Viking Chief's daughter. So out goes a lot of the
comic interaction between Asterix and Obelix, and in comes
a lot of Disney style rubbish about love, honour, and sexual
equality.
It
was a shame that the main characters in the series take a
back seat. It's nice that the Romans and the Pirates make
a brief appearance, but the fact that Asterix, Obelix and
Dogmatix take second place to a new young character is unforgivable. I mean, what's the point of "borrowing"
a classic story if you are going to change it to make it a
lot less entertaining than the original?
In
the book little Dogmatix (who only appears in the film fleetingly)
shows for the first time his distress of trees being uprooted
- something that would become an ongoing joke in the books.
Also, the movie hardly features the village's poor ballad,
Cacofonix, who plays a much more vital role in the book. Oddly
enough we see Cacofonix tied up in the movie's banquet scene
- Asterix and the Normans was one of the few books
where this didn't happen to the poor man.
There
are some amusing additions that the film producers have used
to drag the movie up to date. Justforkix's taste in music
is interesting, as is the fact that the Viking Chief's wife
is called Ikea and his daughter is called Abba.
There's
a good chance that this DVD would have received a higher mark
if the review copy had been presented properly, instead of
a poorly reproduced DVD-Rom disc with a "Propreite of
SND" warning obscuring part of the screen for the movie's
duration. I
can't comment on the extras, or even confirm if there are
any, as our review copy simply contained the movie and nothing
else.
It's
such a shame that the writers of this movie tried to turn
a classic Asterix story into a Disney clone. Asterix
and the Vikings
would have been much more entertaining if it had stayed loyal
to its roots.
Darren
Rea
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