Retrospective: Mortadelo & Filemon - The Big Adventure (2003)

[Kam-Hung Soh]

La gran aventura de Mortadelo y Filemón / Mortadelo & Filemon: The Big 
Adventure (2003)
Review by Kam-Hung Soh 2009.

Filemón (Benito Pocino) and Mortadelo (Pepe Viyuela) are two agents of 
the TIA (Técnicos de Investigación Aeroterráquea), a secret government 
organization. They are assigned to retrieve a stolen device from 
Tirania, whose dictator has declared war on England by dropping a giant 
ball of dung on the Queen's palace. Complicating their mission is that 
their boss, El Super (Mariano Venancio), has sent super agent Fredy 
Mazas (Dominique Pinon) on the same task earlier, and Fredy has turned 
rogue and is trying to kill them.

Based on a long-running Spanish comic book series 'Mortadelo y Filemón' 
by Francisco Ibáñez, writer-director Javier Fesser and co-writer 
Guillermo Fesser have created a colourful and surreal world of secret 
agents, crazy gadgets and violent cartoon slapstick humour (people are 
squashed into pancakes, survive explosions with no ill effect other than 
a black face, leave man-shaped indentations when they run into doors, 
etc.). The plot takes a while to get into gear and oddly enough, the two 
principals don't cause as much mayhem as expected.

A lot of the jokes are rather ponderous and are slow to set up, and not 
having read the comic books, I suspect I missed many of the sight gags. 
My kids found parts of the film hilarious, rather like Lisa and Bart 
Simpson when they watch 'Itchy and Scratchy'.

Spanish with English subtitles.

2 out of 5 stars.

http://vibogafi.blogspot.com/2009/09/review-la-gran-aventura-de-mortadelo-y.html

-- 
Kam-Hung Soh
http://vibogafi.blogspot.com