Film Reviews

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc Sec

• Rating:
• Director: Luc Besson
• Starring: Mathieu Amalric
• Details: France / 107mins (12A).

After two animated adventures, Luc Besson is back directing live action. Always a man for style over substance, it's as you were for the Frenchman with this adaptation of Jacques Tardi's graphic novel adventures. Fun and frantic stuff it might be, caring about what happens is another matter entirely. In a nutshell, if you want some madcap Fifth Element flourishes mixed with Night At The Museum shenanigans then this is for you.
After its Amelie-like intro – setting up a bizarre world inhabited by a myriad of quirky characters - Adele Blanc-Sec soon settles down to reveal the main thrust of the story: At the turn of the 20th century, travel writer/tomb raider/master of disguise Adele (Bourgoin) seeks out the tomb of Pharaoh Rasmes II because his doctor, buried alongside him, was known to work miracles. Adele needs a miracle, as she feels responsible for the comatose state of her sister who has spent the last five years sitting upright in bed with a hatpin sticking out of her head (don't ask). Adele needs to take this mummified doctor back to Paris so her friend, Professor Ménard (Nersessian) can resurrect him (don't ask). However, with all this going on a 1.3 billion year old egg has hatched a pterodactyl and is somehow connected to Ménard in an ET/Elliot fashion (again, don't ask). With the killer bird flying about Paris, the police are on the case with the bumbling inspector (Gilles Lellouche) hiring a big game hunter to help track the pterodactyl down.
As you can probably tell Adele Blanc-Sec is nonsense. But it's meant to be. Flitting about here, there and everywhere, the plot follows an anything goes trajectory. Besson keeps the show moving with some lively pacing but he struggles to join the dots at times; caring one way or another that Adele completes her mission is a struggle left to the audience. It can be fun in a this-is-so-wacky-it's-fun angle but it isn't as fun as Besson would hope. One sequence sees Adele attempt to sneak into Ménard's prison cell to spring his release but is foiled a number of times: When she finally succeeds, however, Ménard states that he prefers a nap to escape so Adele has to leave and try again at another time. That's not funny, that's annoying. And stops the movie stone dead. This isn't the only sequence that suffers this fate.
Louise Bourgoin saves the movie with her committed and energetic turn as the heroine – an Indiana Jones type who likes to lash people with her sharp tongue than a whip. Indy imagery is raised in the opening action sequence set in a pyramid and Mattieu Amalric's bad guy even looks like Toht; more of Amalric vs Bourgoin would have done very nicely indeed but it wasn't to be.
Entertaining but the proceedings are too lightweight to care about the outcome.

Review by Gavin Burke