Gerard Depardieu. I’d heard they were making a live-action Asterix movie a while ago but never found out what became of it. Will have to try to find it now!
I’ve read the whole Asterix canon and the entire Tintin ouevre, except for “L’Aplh-Art”, a couple of times. I always got a laugh out of them, mostly because the second nd third times around I got more of the in-jokes. I love 'em myself, and it seems to me the British translations were better than the American ones. Read a couple of 'em in French too. Great fun!
From what I’ve heard, the Asterix movie wasn’t that great a comedy. It was supposed to be a great French achievement to counter Hollywood’s supposedly unfair monopoly, and the French dutifully went to see it, but it flopped mightily in any other country. YMMV, but please don’t watch this as the pinnacle of European comedy.
The comics, OTOH, were masterpieces - at least until Goscinny (the writer) died. (If there’s a heaven for cartoonists, he’s busy writing for Carl Barks now.) The classics had slapstick for the kids, in-jokes for the adults, running gags for the steady crowd and historic accuracy in details like the legionnaires’ camps & tactics etc. (Seeing the statue of Vercingetorix is somehow different if you know that he didn’t just lay down his weapons AT Caesars feet, but also ON them.) My French isn’t good enough to read them in the original, but the Danish translations were obviously carefully done. I have most of them still, dog-eared & tattered. Hm, I know what I’ll be reading tonight.
S. Norman