HOUBA! On the Trail of the Marsupilami (2012)

Alain Chabat's Sur la piste du Marsupilami arrives from 2012, a live-action and CGI hybrid adapted from Andre Franquin's comic strip, and it concerns a reporter, a down-on-his-luck veterinarian, a mythical creature with an improbably long tail, and a botanist who has condensed a rare orchid into a beverage that reverses his age. It is a family adventure. It knows this about itself and never aspires to be anything else. The jungle setting, the imaginary republic of Palombia, the coup d'etat, the deposed dictator with a taste for Celine Dion: all of it exists in service of slapstick, and none of it carries a message.

The cast is notably polyglot. Jamel Debbouze, Liya Kebede, Aissa Maiga, Dalip Singh: performers of North African, Ethiopian, and Indian descent fill prominent roles. That they are simply there, without commentary, is the whole matter. The film does not pause to explain them, nor does it invite the audience to reflect on what their presence signifies. It casts them and moves on. A brief scene in which a general disguises himself in women's clothing is played for laughs and nothing further. The Queen Paya delivers prophecy. Nobody interrogates the patriarchy. The indigenous tribe functions as a fantasy device, no more ethnographic than the talking animal at the center of the poster.

The result, then, is a competent, cheerful piece of entertainment that predates the era of the annotated blockbuster. No economic grievance animates its villain, whose only ambition is to remain young forever. No environmental sermon interrupts the chase sequences. No character is diagnosed, celebrated, or corrected across the ninety-minute running time. It is a film about a monkey-like creature and the people pursuing it. Some viewers will find this refreshing. Others will find it empty. Both reactions are defensible, and neither requires a spreadsheet.