Asterix & Obelix: God Save Britannia (2012)

Asterix crosses the channel to help his second cousin Anticlimax fend off Julius Caesar, which is roughly the plot of every Asterix story ever told and precisely the plot of this one. The year is 2012. France has produced its fourth live-action outing in the series, this time drawn from two comic albums, premiered at the Dinard Festival of British Cinema, and received the sort of notices usually reserved for wet Sundays. We approach such films with a clipboard and a heavy heart, because duty does not care about our feelings.

The ledger comes back empty. The cast is a solid wall of white European celebrities, Catherine Deneuve included, and nobody appears to have received a memo regarding representation. There is no queer subtext, no feminist argument, no reckoning with race. Obelix's bulk is a running joke about boars and menhirs, not a statement about bodies. The Romans are villains because they are Romans. Gérard Depardieu plays the role for the fourth and final time, and the film does not pause to mourn. The weather in 50 BC Britain is the least of anyone's concerns.

The setting is fantasy, so history is not being revised toward any modern purpose. No character turns to the camera to explain the correct position on anything. This is a loud, genial, faintly desperate family comedy that wants to sell tickets and perhaps a few menhirs, and it does neither with much grace. In the great sommelier's notebook of social consciousness, the vintage registers as a clean zero. An honest zero. Restful, even. Some films arrive bearing messages. This one arrives bearing Obelix.