“Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion”  (PG) **

MY Asterix books have gone to a stepdaughter in Melbourne. I miss them.

Their creators and the translators who rendered their satirical humour into English have all died, but the world-wide publishing phenomenon that they represent lives on.  

“Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion” is the second movie that was not written by the original team of Goscinny (words) and Uderzo (illustrations). It shows.

The directors are Alexandre Astier and Louis Clichy. The writers and voice-over actors are not listed in the English-language IMDb page from which I normally harvest source material. Nor are the translators.

The English-language version of the film comes with a distinctly American accent and vocabulary.

So what’s it about? Well, while gathering the ingredients for the magic potion from which Asterix gets his strength when the fighting starts, and into a cauldron of which the baby Obelix fell, thereby acquiring his size and strength, the Druid Getafix has a fall that injures his foot and, more importantly, makes him contemplate mortality. So off go Asterix, Obelix, Dogmatix and Getafix in search of a young Druid wise and skilful enough to be entrusted with the secret recipe for brewing the potion.

The search takes them through the customary meetings, mishaps and misdemeanors that the original books made favourites in 111 languages besides French.

The Asterix stories were never intended to be entertainment for children. Their translation into cinematic animation may go over the heads of littlies. Older-age children, many of whom will also be parents, wondering whether they or their offspring should see it must, as they always do, use the available information to make an informed choice.

At all cinemas