THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADELE BLANC-SEC is the latest movie from the normally reliable French director Luc Besson, and sad to say it's a complete piece of nonsense. Apparently the big-screen adaptation of some popular French comic books, this sees the titular character embarking on a whimsical fantasy adventure involving dinosaurs and mummies.
It's as silly as it sounds, but I had hoped for some exotic, globe-trotting intrigue - after all, we mustn't forget that the French are the ones who brought us the wonderful TINTIN comics, after all. But this turns out to be an oddball affair through and through, with the humour aimed at a distinctly juvenile audience and yet adult scenes elsewhere.
Sadly, this is one of those films that delights in sub-par CGI animation, so the pterodactyl scenes are pretty naffy. The nadir comes with a pair of CGI animated gorillas - don't expect RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES style quality here, these two are horrendous and it makes me wonder about the state of film-making when it's cheaper to animate two gorillas than to simply visit the zoo and film them with a traditional camera.
There are many familiar French faces in the cast, including Mathieu Amalric (MUNICH) and Giles Lellouche (POINT BLANK), but most play caricatures hidden beneath prosthetics and make-up. Louise Bourgoin's titular heroine is a real bitch of a character, somebody who's rude and hateful to everybody around her, so that makes her hard to warm to. In fact, the only stuff I enjoyed in this film were the reanimated mummies, who are genuinely funny and wacky creations. Everything else is a chore.
It's as silly as it sounds, but I had hoped for some exotic, globe-trotting intrigue - after all, we mustn't forget that the French are the ones who brought us the wonderful TINTIN comics, after all. But this turns out to be an oddball affair through and through, with the humour aimed at a distinctly juvenile audience and yet adult scenes elsewhere.
Sadly, this is one of those films that delights in sub-par CGI animation, so the pterodactyl scenes are pretty naffy. The nadir comes with a pair of CGI animated gorillas - don't expect RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES style quality here, these two are horrendous and it makes me wonder about the state of film-making when it's cheaper to animate two gorillas than to simply visit the zoo and film them with a traditional camera.
There are many familiar French faces in the cast, including Mathieu Amalric (MUNICH) and Giles Lellouche (POINT BLANK), but most play caricatures hidden beneath prosthetics and make-up. Louise Bourgoin's titular heroine is a real bitch of a character, somebody who's rude and hateful to everybody around her, so that makes her hard to warm to. In fact, the only stuff I enjoyed in this film were the reanimated mummies, who are genuinely funny and wacky creations. Everything else is a chore.