A French action-comedy-drama-fantasy-sci-fi hybrid based on a comic book series, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec shares sees our titular heroine going all Tomb Raider in early twentieth century Egypt before chasing a pteradactyl around Paris in the search for a cure to revive her tragically-injured sister.
brilliant...
There's nothing that extraordinary or adventurous about this film, other than the opening 15 minutes in Egypt, which borrows liberally from Indiana Jones and director Luc Besson's own The Fifth Element. It's an exciting beginning, preceded by a typically French prologue featuring narration that wouldn't be out of place in Amelié. Where the movie comes into its own is when Adèle returns to her home town, Paris, to find her one hope for saving her sister's life, a barmy professor, is being put to death for unwittingly bringing a prehistoric monster back to life which is now terrorising the city's residents. What follows is a quirky, oddly subdued and suprisingly emotional tale of sisterly love and unfortunate coincidence, backed up by some amusing fish-out-of-water comedy moments from a revived Pharoah and his minions. Wacky, inventive and with a particularly gallic Besson sensibility, Blanc-Sec is a charming movie, with a plucky, interesting heroine at the centre of it all.
but...
It seems churlish to complain that the film is not adventurous enough, but the title promises more than the film delivers - this is no country-hopping travelogue movie, but it certainly whets the appetite for any possible further adventures. I didn't really need to see Louise Bourgoin's boobs though, as pretty as they were.
briefly...
Not reaching the dizzy heights of confection that made Amelié dazzle, Adèle Blanc-Sec's Diverting Adventure is still more exciting and inventive than many of its peers.
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