The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

Extraordinary!! Uniquely different and fascinating and ever-so enjoyable! A visual feast and a plot that never gets boring! Louise Bourgoin is simply brilliant as Adele Blanc-Sec!

Based upon Jacques Tardi's historical based fantasy comic book, Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec, this film takes place in the secret history of our world before the first World War. Today, we'd call the style of Tardi's comic steampunk, but don't let that name sway you: this movie is awesome.Two of Tardi's stories inspired this movie: Adèle and the Beast and Mummies on Parade, so this film takes place in 1912 Paris.Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element, Léon: The Professional, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets) is one of the foremost creators in the cinéma du look style which Wikipedia claims favors "style over substance, spectacle over narrative." His visual style dominates everything he creates, including this movie which is the movie that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen should have been.Let me see if I can sum up the craziness that this film contains. Professor Espérandieu (Philippe Nahon, who played the nameless butcher in three Gaspar Noé films, Carne, I Stand Alone and Irréversible) hatches a pterodactyl which ends up killing a politician who is having an affair in a taxicab with a showgirl. The President of France demands that the National Police handle the sightings of the dinosaur, with Inspector Albert Caponi handling the investigation.We finally meet our heroine, Adèle Blanc-Sec, who works as a travel writer and is on a quest to find the mummified Patmosis, who was the doctor for Pharoah Ramses II. It turns out that she wants to revive the famous physician to save the life of her sister Agathe, who has had a tennis accident. Her arch enemy Professor Dieuleveult (Mathieu Amalric, Quantum of Solace) also wants the mummy, but she defeats him and travels back to Paris.She needs Professor Espérandieu's help to revive the mummy, but he's now on death row as he's been blamed for the dinosaur attacks. However, big game hunter Justin de Saint-Hubert is trying to kill the flying monster while Andrej Zborowski (Nicolas Giraud, Taken) wants to save it. Just as Espérandieu is to be executed, Adèle and Zborowski tame the pterodactyl and fly it to the rescue.While enjoying tea with the revived mummy, we learn that he was really a physicist, not a physician, so he is unable to help revive Agathe. However, Saint-Hubert fatally shoots the pterosaur along with Espérandieu.Adèle and Patmosis go to the Louvre, where they revive all of the mummies, including the Pharoah, who revives Agathe. Deciding that he wants to see Paris, the undead Egyptian leads his entire court into the night.After all that adventure, Adèle decides to relax on a cruise. But as we see her nemesis with an evil grin, we learn that she's on the Titanic! What a set up for a sequel, as is the credits scene where Ménard tries to get his revenge on Saint-Hubert. I really loved this movie. It's kind of amazing that it got such a limited release in the U.S. because it's such an imaginative film. It also looks gorgeous, with perfectly integrated effects. Plus, I laughed several times during this and the humor didn't get in the way of the tale.This film was intended to be the first of three films, but it's been a few years since it was made. When asked by Den of Geek in 2016 if there would be a sequel, Besson said, "I would love to, because I love this character Adele. She's basically the grandmother of Indiana Jones. But it was in French and it's difficult in France to do films with a certain kind of budget because it's just in French. But I hope we can."

In 1911, in Paris, the bold journalist Adèle Blanc-Sec (Louise Bourgoin) is assigned by her editor to travel to Peru to write about the Incas, but she goes to Egypt instead to seek out the mummy of a doctor of Ramses II to bring him to Paris. Adèle has an agreement with Professor Marie-Joseph Espérandieu (Jacky Nercessian) that has the ability of bringing the dead back to life to resurrect the doctor to heel her twin sister Agathe Blanc-Sec (Laure de Clermont), who has been catatonic and paraplegic for five years due to an accident caused by Adèle. However, Professor Espérandieu is arrested in prison and sentenced to death after bringing to life a pterodactyl from an ancient egg in Louvre that caused the death of three persons. Now the last hope of Agathe is that Adèle saves Professor Espérandieu from the guillotine."Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec" is a highly entertaining and funny adventure by Luc Besson. Last week, I was zapping the television and I saw the last part of the adventure of Adèle Blanc- Sec. Today I have just watched this movie on DVD with my family and we really enjoyed the story. The weird and bizarre characters slightly recall the surrealism of Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet in "Delicatessen and "La Cité des Enfants Perdus". My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "As Múmias do Faraó"("The Mummies of the Pharaoh")

A charming and frantic farce by Besson. Based on a series of French comics, The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adele Blanc-Sec is a French version of Indiana Jones, with a lot more magic and cartoonish behaviour. The film is quite messy in parts as one story becomes a tool to advance another story. The film begins with an old professor with psychic abilities, waking a pterodactyl from its egg. Meanwhile, in Egypt, Adele Blanc-Sec is looking for the mummified corpse of Rameses' physician so she can bring it back to life and cure her comatose sister. These two plots soon intertwine, but not in an incredibly smooth fashion. The make-up design is wonderful, and typically OTT French. Prosthetics are used to exaggerate ears, noses, teeth and age. This leads to a number of visually memorable characters. Unfortunately, with so much going on many characters get lost. Amalric is only present for a few minutes, while others are shown too often. Still, this is a ridiculous farce which revels in its absurdity. The CGI is convincing and adds a lot to the later emotional scenes. Hopefully they'll be more to come.