Asterix-Asterix the Gaul (Astérix le Gaulois) (1967)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Main Menu Audio Biographies-Character Notes-blurbs for all the Asterix DVDs
Rating
Year Of Production	1967
Running Time	65:40 (Case: 70)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Rene Goscinny Albert Uderzo
Studio Distributor	Shock Entertainment	Starring	Bill Oddie Bernard Bresslaw Ron Moody Sheila Hancock Peter Hawkins Brian Blessed Michael Elphick Andrew Sachs Tim Brooke-Taylor Douglas Blackwell
Case	Alpha-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	Gerard Calvi

    This is the latest of the Asterix DVDs in terms of my reviews. In terms of story sequence, it is the first one, and I think it was the first one made, too. If you're looking for reviews of some of the others, you'll find Asterix and Cleopatra here, and Asterix in Britain here.

    Asterix the Gaul is one of the annoying ones. The opening has the familiar faces, with the familiar names: Asterix and Obelix, of course, plus Getafix the druid, Cacofonix the bard, and Vitalstatistix the chief of the village. I felt glad to see that - I thought this would be a good one. But then the film started, and we hear the druid referred to as Panoramix, the bard as StopTheMusix, and the chief as TonABrix, and references to regular doses of power potion. Is it so difficult for the voice actors to be given a script containing the right names?!? To pour lemon juice on the paper cuts, the cast list at the end has the correct names - including Tim Brooke-Taylor playing Cacofonix. Strangely, the cast list includes Impedimenta, even though I don't recall her appearing in this film - I fear the cast list has been attached from some other film. What a mess! 

    This film is, apart from the wrong names, fairly reasonable. The story is reasonably true to the feel of the original comics, and the animation style is quite recognisable. Of all the Asterix DVDs, I'd rate this as the least objectionable.

    This one has the Romans attempting to get the secret of the Gaul's strength by sending a spy into the village. The spy discovers the truth of the potion, and the Romans kidnap the druid. They try to force him to divulge the recipe for the potion, but strangely enough, the potion the druid brews doesn't have quite the effect they desire...

Video

    This film is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and therefore is not 16x9 enhanced. I have no information to indicate whether that was the theatrical aspect ratio.

    The picture is fairly sharp, with no low-level noise. Shadow detail is not a consideration in this style of animation.

    Colour is fine - there are some solidly saturated colours on display. There are no oversaturated colours or colour bleed.

    There are plenty of film artefacts, but they are small, except for the strange marks on the right side of the frame at 53:12. There's not a huge amount of aliasing to be seen, even with the heavy black borders around the characters and objects. There is some minor MPEG shimmer on backgrounds, but it is not troubling.

    There are no subtitles.

    The disc is single sided and single layered - no layer change to worry about.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The only soundtrack is Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, in English. There are a few audio glitches, but they are not frequent.

    The dialogue is clear and readily understood. Audio sync is not readily judged on animation of this kind.

    The score is a bit annoyingly bouncy and bright. It comes from Gerard Calvi, who has scored other Asterix films. There's dancing, but it is necessary to the plot.

    The mono soundtrack makes no use of the surrounds or subwoofer.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is static, with music.

Profiles - Characters 

    These are the same character profiles as on the other Asterix discs, including Dogmatix, who does not appear in this film.

Notes - the Asterix films 

    This is a blurb for each of the seven films in the Asterix range.

    I can find no record of the release of this film on DVD in Region 1.

    The original Asterix movie, on a reasonable DVD.

    The video quality is better than some of the other Asterix discs.

    The audio quality is adequate.

    The extras are the same as on the other Asterix discs.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall