In this breezily far-fetched mixture of Mary Poppins and Lara Croft, popular novelist Adèle Blanc-Sec (Louise Bourgoin) must save a crazy expert who has brought a pterodactyl to life, so he can bring an Egyptian mummy back to life, and it can in turn use ancient magic to revive her sister, who has been dead or in a coma for four years following a bizarre tennis accident. This is a comic imbroglio adapted from the 1970's graphic novels of Jacques Tardi and brought to the screen by big Euro producer Luc Besson. The humor is a bit heavy-handed, the early twentieth-century feel is hardly precise and Bourgoin's behavior lacks finesse, but Besson has a gift for spectacle. Matthieu Amalric and Jean-Paul Rouve are also featured. Adèle rides the pterodactyl around like characters in Avatar. Mastering your pet monster and turning it into a means of rapid transportation is becoming a commonplace video-game-into-movie gimmick. There's a handsome young scientist madly in love with Adèle, who's got no use for him. Luckily he meets her sister after she's been revived by the mummy. The movie's excessive enthusiasm for makeup is revealed in Amalric's unrecognizable look as the evil Dieuleveult, and Adèle's series of disguises as a fat cook, nun, doctor, etc. visiting the prison vainly trying to liberate Professor Ménard. Fancy kid stuff from France, not likely to translate well to the global market but further evidence of the French skill at complicated production. Seen in Paris on opening day in April 2010 at the classic old cinema on the Rue de Babylone, La Pagode.
