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A small Gaul village, 50 BC. A Chinese Princess, Fu Yi, and her female bodyguard Tat Han, arrive via carriage to ask the Gaul chief for assistance. Namely, a Chinese rebel Deng Tsin Qin imprisoned the Chinese Empress in order to take over the Kingdom. Asterix and Obelix accept to travel to the Chinese city with Fu Yi and Tat Han, and both fall in love with them. However, following his break-up with Cleopatra, the angry Caesar orders his Roman Army to travel to the same Chinese city to help Deng Tsin Qin conquer the Kingdom. Luckily, Asterix and Obelix save the Empress from the prison, and she assembles a million soldiers that force Caesar to retreat. A wedding between Fu Yi and a Chinese Prince is held in the Gaul village.
The 5th live action Asterix film, filmed 11 years after the weak reception of the last one, "God Save Britannia", obfuscated the characters and events so much that after it the viewers are unsure what a good Asterix and Obelix live action film could even look like anymore. There are some solid ideas here, but even more misguided ones. "The Middle Kingdom" starts off surprisingly good: Asterix and Obelix (Gilles Lellouche replaces the problematic Depardieu) stumble upon two Roman soldiers in the forest, Asterix punches one of them, the camera pans up to follow the catapulted soldier flying up, and reaches the title of the movie in the sky, so then the camera pans down for a neat match cut to the Gaul village underneath. The rest is less inspired, though. Throughout the story, it is surprising that the Kung Fu fights of the Chinese characters are somehow more effective than the stale fights of the two Gaul protagonists. Some gags work. In one of them, a Chinese Zen monk stretches out the palm of his hand with a coin on it and dares a Gaul to try to be fast to take it, but the Gaul just slaps the monk and thus takes his coin. Other jokes are almost good, but don't go anywhere. One interesting attempt at a joke is when the Roman commander Antivirus (Zlatan Ibrahimović!) leads the army in an attack in tune to his version of the Queen song "We Will Rock You", but there is no pay-off. The soldiers chant and fight while the song plays in the background, but it doesn't make the sequence any better. Other attempts at jokes backfire: for instance, the Druid mixed a "strange" potion, which causes Asterix to go into a crazy mode after drinking it, stretching his giant tongue for 10 feet and obtaining elephant ears (?) for a moment. What was the point of that? The melancholic-bitter subplots of Caesar's, Asterix's and Obelix's unrequited love feel strangely depressing and weird for this type of film, and the camaraderie of the two protagonists is nonexistent, yet the movie is still overall solid and easily watchable.
Grade:+
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