The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

Indulge me, please, for a few paragraphs while I explain why I was so excited to see 'The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc- Sec': A few years ago, as I was closing down my web browser an ad poped up and caught my eye, but it was too late the button had been pressed and the window closed. It was a ad for a book about a top british Scientist and his dashing sidekick who embarked on daring adventures, and it stirred up some distant memory of a half forgotten childhood story. What I remembered most was that the Scientist was the main character and the handsome athletic guy was most definitely his side kick, as it seemed to take the standard stereotypes and stand them on it head.

Of course I immediately re opened the browser and spend a while refreshing the page in the hope of coming across the ad again, no such luck. I posted the request on a couple forums asking if anyone knew of a familiar story and a few people got back to me with suggestions, Dan Dare, Biggles even Sherlock Holmes, but I knew at once it wasn't one of those stories - they all fitted the standard tropes and my story was different. Then someone suggested perhaps the characters where Tintin and Captain Haddock and, although I knew it wasn't what I was looking for, something fell into place. I remembered that the story came from a book at my then local library which was right next to a whole slew of Tintin books. And that was the biggest break through I had in my mystery, a trip to my current local library didn't help searching online provided me with in the region of 3 million answers and after about a week obsessing over the issue I got back to my regular life.

Fast forward to last year at the Edinburgh Film Festival and a screening of James Hulths Lucky Luke, again a story I remembered from my childhood. I left the theatre trying to remember the general premise of the story and how close it had followed the cartoons I remember watching as a child, so I did what any respectable 30-something does now-a-days. I googled 'Lucky Luke' from my phone.  And thats when the wave of nostalgia hit me; 'Lucky Luke', 'Blueberry', 'Largo Winch', 'Adèle Blanc- Sec' and the pair I'd spent that week obsessing over, 'Blake & Mortimer'. I'd assumed these childhood stories came from English books and had obsessive searched amongst published British literature when in fact they were all European, mainly French, comics. That French Emersion Schooling in Canada was belatedly showing up.

Just like the American film industry, French cinema has been resurrecting some of its comic book heroes recently. Most recently in Luc Bessons 'The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec', which I got to see as part of the Glasgow Youth Film Festival last week. Adèle would make a brilliant Disney heroine, feisty, witty, clever and completely out of place in her world but utterly charming with it.  Based in turn of the century Paris she is an adventurous girl reporter, who travels the world in gorgeous clothes fighting yetis and the like. Doesn't really sound like the usual thing you'd expect from the director of 'Leon' and 'Nikita', does it? But when you also consider he is also the man behind 'The Fifth Element' and 'Arthur and the Invisibles' you can see the correlation and this is most definitely a family film.

While a pterodactyl terrorises the people of Paris, Adele travels to Egypt in the hope of resurrecting a mummified doctor how might have the knowledge to save her comatose sister. It everything it should be, light hearted, humorous and filled with mild perl. The lead actress, Louise Bourgoin, has immense charm the costumes are lovely, there is a hint of romance with Nicholas Giraud's shy naturalist and more risque stuff with Patmosis. Yes the plot is thin in spots and yes the comedy resorts to the scatological in places but please, its just entertainment, sit back and watch the spectacle and I don't think you'll be disappointed.


P.s. I really loved t.he CGI Mummies. Slightly jerky but still my favorite part.