Claude Zidi

  • Ripoux 3 (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) If you thought that resurrecting long-dormant franchises was purely a Hollywood problem, then I’ve got bad news for you: it’s a worldwide issue, as Paris-set Ripoux 3 illustrates. Picking up twelve years after Ripoux contre RIpoux, this third instalment does acknowledge the passing of time in the series’ very loose chronology: Our younger crooked cop has become a senior officer and hasn’t seen his mentor in corruption for a decade. That mentor has fallen on hard times—living on a boat and still gambling beyond his means. When a score goes wrong, the two meet again briefly, then spend the rest of the film pushed and pulled by a fake death, younger protégés, enmity from the mob, a growing police investigation and one last score. At least both Philippe Noiret and Thierry Lhermitte are in fine form here, easily slipping into familiar characters. Less heavy on police corruption but more insistent on traditional comic devices, Ripoux 3 only makes a middling argument in favour of its existence. It comes as a relief that it doesn’t try to repeat the same things as its predecessors, but it’s not clear why that story deserved to be told. In keeping with that thought, writer-director Claude Zidi’s film itself is watchable but not overly impressive—a comedy that ends up as a heist film, with both characters passing the torch to the younger generation. Hardly essential, but not the worst scenario if you were looking for one more quick lap around the track with those two lead characters.

  • Astérix & Obélix contre César (1999)

    Astérix & Obélix contre César (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) Adapting a comic book to the big screen is a tricky exercise, even more so when it’s working from an exuberant source such as the Astérix and Obélix series. As someone who grew up on the series, the idea of attempting to adapt the comic violence, over-the-top gags and fantastic visuals of the comic seems hopeless. Astérix & Obélix contre César, as the first live-action adaptation of the series, clearly underscores how difficult it is. On the positive side, the film does manage to present an authentic Astérix adventure, complete with the wild cast of characters in the protagonist’s village. The state of computer-generated imagery circa 1999 is just barely enough to give an idea of what’s possible, while looking unfortunately dated twenty years later. A still-young Gerard Depardieu is featured as Obélix, along with Christian Clavier as Asterix. Roberto Benigni, then at the height of his international fame, showboats annoyingly in a villain role. The film works, but barely: other than the weirdness in trying to fit a fluid comic style in live-action, the film also frequently loses itself in useless subplots, and becomes actively irritating when it repeatedly tries to pairs up (despite objections from other characters) the fifty-something Depardieu with a much-younger love interest. Writer-director Claude Zidi doesn’t embarrass himself (the bar being low enough), but the approach here is rougher than in other later classic comics adaptations along the lines of Lucky Luke, Le Marsupilami or Gaston Lagaffe. (None of them were all that successful, but more so than here.) Considering what was available in 1999, it’s an honest half-success.