YMMV / The Twelve Tasks of Asterix

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: Despite the Anachronism Stew mentioned on the main page, one of the biggest sources of jokes in the movie, The Place That Sends You Mad, is not part of it. Modern viewers will obviously identify with the frustrations of a vast bureaucracy, but Ancient Rome was in fact one of the first empires to deal with these kinds of problems, especially considering that this was long before modern communications or even a reliable postal service.
• Awesome Music: A lot of the film's music is whimsical and cartoonish, but for the task where Asterix and Obelix have to climb the mountain and answer the Old Man of the Mountain's riddle, we get an epic orchestral score with powerful, Wagnerian brass and strings as they ascend, and a chilling, mystical mix of flutes and celesta when the meet the Old Man at the summit. This manages to throw the absurdity of the riddle — answering which pile of laundry has been washed in "Olympus, The Gods' Detergent" — into even sharper relief.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Quite a few scenes are really absurd and surreal compared to what Asterix and Obelix usually face in the comics (a man throwing a spear around the world, a man running faster than the wind, skull tennis, the subway scene while Asterix and Obelix are in the Cave of the Beast, the circus scene...). In fact, the full "Cave of the Beast" sequence itself can be counted as such.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • While Asterix is fairly popular in Germany anyway, this movie sold 10 million admissions there (and mind you, that was only West Germany). It became a fan favourite in the country mostly because of the Permit A-38 scene (see also Memetic Mutation below).
  • The film is also quite popular in Italy and, like in France, is often broadcasted around Christmas.
  • Downplayed with Quebec, where the movie is similarily broadcast every Christmas as a tradition, but there is less of a language and cultural barrier to cross between France and Quebec.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The ending of the movie has the Gauls permanently defeating Caesar and sending him to the countryside. However, the Golden Book shows the opposite in the future, namely that the Romans have triumphed and colonized the village.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • When the Gauls finally pass the last task and Caesar surrenders, you might expect the Gauls to take revenge on the man that conquered Gaul and has harassed them at every turn. Instead, they allow him to retire to a sumptuous villa with Cleopatra, where they can live in peace. Knowing how his career ended in real life, well, he's very lucky.
  • After Obelix proves himself by abandoning the Isle of Pleasure because it has no wild boar, the High Priestess attempts to seduce Asterix, who has been practically frozen throughout the entire challenge by the beauty of the women. The instant Obelix calls him, Asterix immediately snaps out of it and runs to join his best friend in escaping the island.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "The Place That Sends You Mad" has very good chances of showing up in the minds of French and Italian people when dealing with complex and daunting bureaucracy.
  • Permit A-38 has become a major meme in France, where it is frequently mentioned whenever confronted by administrative nightmares, complete with gifs of Asterix losing his calm. It has also become a major meme in Germany (as Passierschein A-38), where jokes about bureaucrats in general are extremely popular.
• Signature Scene: The perilous quest against the Vast Bureaucracy to obtain the Permit A-38. Regardless of country, viewers are likely to find this the funniest and most memorable of the tasks the two heroes are given.

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