ASTERIX AND CLEOPATRA (1968)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

Possibly I enjoyed the next film in the series, ASTERIX AND CLEOPATRA, a bit more because I hadn’t read the album in some time, if at all. However, I noted that the filmmakers seemed to have had a freer hand in this adaptation. For one thing, while the original certainly would have supplied its fair share of slapstick violence, CLEOPATRA the film shows a greater will to come up the sort of slapstick that can only work in animation. For instance, one scene pits Asterix and Obelix against a ship full of marauding pirates. While the comics-album may have featured some of the same stunts, the movie surely expanded on the action, simply because an animated film has the luxury of suggesting real motion.

The setup again testifies to the serial’s juvenile focus. While older readers might be fascinated with the alleged romance of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, here the emperor and the Egyptian queen are concerned not with getting bedded but with winning a bet. For no apparent reason, Caesar disparages the Egyptians’ ability to build ordinary houses, claiming that they only excel with pyramids. Cleopatra swears that she will have her chief architect construct for Caesar a fabulous palace within three months. However, chief architect Edifis knows that he can’t pull this off with the workers and materials he’s got, even though the price of failure will be his own life.

Fortunately, Edifis somehow has a personal acquaintance with Getafix, the druid of Asterix’s village. The architect voyages all the way to Gaul and convinces the druid and the tribe’s two favorite warriors to come to Egypt. (Nothing is said as to who’s empowered to stave off the Romans while Asterix and Obelix are gone.) After various hiccups, the foursome return to Egypt, and Getafix distributes the magic potion to the Egyptian workers, so that they can work super-fast. However, Edifis has an architect-rival, Artifis, who seeks to block the building project—and Caesar, when he finds about the presence of the Gauls, enlists his own forces to prevent his losing the bet with the queen.

It’s all very silly stuff, but at least it’s silly-clever rather than silly-stupid. The film even sports a couple of songs that almost certainly were not in the comics-album.