Asterix-Twelve Tasks, The (Douze Travaux d'Astérix, Les) (Shock) (1976)

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General		Extras
Category	Animation	Main Menu Audio Biographies-Character
Rating
Year Of Production	1976
Running Time	78:20 (Case: 82)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Rene Goscinny Albert Uderzo
Studio Distributor	Shock Entertainment	Starring	None Given
Case	Alpha
RPI	$29.95	Music	Gerard Calvi

    Asterix - the Twelve Tasks was not an Asterix book first. There is a book of that name now, but it was made after the movie, and is not a normal Asterix book - there is far less drawing, and much more text than normal. To be honest, I don't much like the book, but the movie is OK. One tiny point - the cover reads Asterix The Twelve Tasks, while the credits read The Twelve Tasks of Asterix - a small difference, but an irritating one.

    The animation in this movie is hand drawn, and not particularly well. The edges of characters are somewhat feathery, and the attention to detail is not as good as some of the others. Something of a disappointment, really.

    This story draws from mythology; the twelve labours of Hercules, to be precise. A bit off-beat, given that we are dealing with a meeting between Roman and Gallic cultures, but the Romans were relatively familiar with Greek mythology, so it is not too hard to believe. The tasks are reasonable, in context, and the performances turned in by Asterix and Obelix are what you'd expect. Only the ending is a bit hard to take. 

    The entire series of Asterix movies could have been treated with a bit more respect. Giving us pan-and-scan transfers from what looks like VHS masters is bad enough, but then they have the gall (pun intended) to charge close to full price for the discs. Not good enough.

Video

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. This is definitely not the original aspect ratio (even though I cannot discover the original aspect ratio) - some of the picture is clipped on either side, particularly in the scene showing the twelve labours of Hercules - I'd guess the original ratio to be around 1.66:1 to 1.85:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is reasonably sharp, but the feathery pencil edges to the characters make it quite hard to judge. Being animation, there's no shadow detail to discuss.

    Colour is nicely saturated and there is no colour bleed.

    There are some interesting artefacts on display here. At 24:10 is what looks like a smudge on the telecine lens. There's a joggle, or possibly a missing frame, at 36:38. There's a major film artefact at 59:46, and some strange marks at 62:05. Add in lots of smaller film artefacts, season with a dash or two of minor aliasing, and garnish with some background shimmer. Look, none of this is truly awful, but it is far from a top-class transfer. 

    There are no subtitles.

    The disc is single-sided and single-layered. Thus, there is no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is a single soundtrack on this disc - an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack without surround encoding. The soundtrack sounds mono.

    Dialogue is particularly garbled at 59:46, but it is hard to tell if this is inherent in the source material, or part of the transfer. Audio sync is not a consideration for this kind of animation.

    The score is bouncy, like a cross between The Flintstones (animated version) and Merry Melodies. It's by Gerard Calvi, but rather better than his effort on Asterix and Cleopatra. 

    The surrounds and subwoofer are not used by this soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    This Asterix DVD has the same extras as Asterix and Cleopatra, which is fewer than the earlier batch.

Menu

    The main menu is static, with music.

Characters

    There are profiles for six of the characters: Asterix, Obelix, Vitalstatistix, Getafix, Cacofonix, and Dogmatix.

    As far as I can ascertain, this disc, like all of the Asterix animations, is not yet available in Region 1.

    This is a slightly atypical Asterix story, on an inferior DVD.

    The video quality is poor.

    The audio quality is adequate.

    The extras are barely worth mentioning.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall