Watch The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec For Free

I love this movie so much

Please don't spend money on this.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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!

Lara Croft with less bust, more brains; less action, but more wit, charm, and humor (not to mention, a touch of European morbidity, which is much of what makes this film more "adult" than equivalent American productions ). If you're forced to pick, I think it's got to be Adele over Lara for thinking beings. (Just generally, I'd like to add, always go with subtitles instead of dubbing given the choice, since dubbing pretty much always kills the atmosphere.) This is a terrific quirky and "clean" film that adults can enjoy watching without blushing with children in the same room, girls especially, I'm guessing (which I honestly believe is the reality, not mere simple-minded, patriarchal, stereotypical, naive sexism, or whatever other terms radical feminists would excoriate me with). The story is, after all, built around an extremely capable and intellectually sharp female character, and that may reasonably be a very strong draw for many parents looking for role models for their offspring of the gentler sex (there I go again). It's more than just a family-friendly film though, since I'm a guy who typically watches and prefers harsher material. I really enjoyed this change of pace, especially because it appealed to my taste for the weird with it's humorous and original mash-up of stuff from movies like "The Raider's of the Lost Ark" and "The Mummy". Although the plot didn't always flow quite perfectly, that's just minor nitpicking, and there's little chance I'll be having any second thoughts about giving this film top marks given how light, fun, creative, and intelligent it is.

'The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec' is highly enjoyable historical hokum from the man who brought you Leon; Big Blue; Fifth Element; Subway; etc. Auteur Luc Besson presents a whimsical but nonetheless entertaining comic-book adaptation from the pen of Jacques Tardi (9 comics from 1976 to 2007). The material presented here liberally plunders Indiana Jones' locker and is chock full of the trappings of ancient Egypt, but Adele does not have the depth of (arguably) Spielberg (and Lucas)'s greatest character. Nonetheless, our spunky, no-nonsense, bookish yet glamorous heroine is played with great verve and style by Louise Bourgoin. There is also a lot of humour in her performance, which is very engaging and drives the film forward – polite reserve is not a part of Adele's armoury, but her impatience with others can perhaps be forgiven in view of her sister's plight. It's all a bit breathless and the plot does somewhat stagger from frame to frame in the way of a comic (i.e. a graphic novel, not Dara O'Briain with a skin-full), but despite the other characters being little more than caricatures, and Adele's motivation being very one dimensional (albeit noble), Mademoiselle Bourgoin's charisma is more than enough to carry the film. More taxidermy than taxing, but loads of fun.

My unusual relationship with films inspired by comics continues to develop, as for various reasons I have seen a lot of these in the last few weeks. I picked 'Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec' this week at the end of an exhausting day of work (and heat outside) as I was looking for easy entertainment that would not require efforts from the few cells in my brain that staid awake. More or less I got what I wanted.I think that I know the reason because of which I enjoy more the films inspired by French comics than the American ones, and feel more comfortable in the company of Asterix than in the one of Superman, Batman, or Spiderman. Unlike many of my American (and not only American) friends I grew on the French comics journals, especially 'Vaillant' (later named 'Pif gadget'). Second to 'Vaillant' was 'Pilote' and this is where the character of Adele Blanc-Sec created by Jacques Tardi comes from.Adele is a French newspaper journalist in the years before the First World War. She is beautiful, she travels around the world, she never seems to lose energy. Well, she's a cartoon character. She also has a fantastic sense of humor, and ridicules her enemies with the same easiness she beats them with various weapons or tricks. The first sequences that see her travel to Egypt in order to find, bring to France and bring back to life a physician of the Pharaohs who is of course the only person dead or alive who can save the life of her sister are both well filmed (as is the full movie), funny and a reverence to Indiana Jones.Certainly script author and director Luc Besson wrote and directed more 'important' and 'serious' films. Here and in other films made lately he seems to enjoy himself with making easier stories, and targeting all audiences. While I miss films like the original 'La Femme Nikita', 'Leon' or 'The Fifth Element', I cannot deny that I enjoyed this film at many moments, including the thick comical parodies of the characters at the start of the 20th century (policemen, scientists, and even le president de la Republique) or of the ancient Egyptians on a walk to know Paris, a Paris emptied by heavy traffic but already with most landmarks in place. Louise Bourgoin as Adele Blanc-Sec is sexy and funny, and as the last scene shows her boarding the Titanic I am wondering whether Besson intents to locate there her next adventure. Ah, a parody of Cameron's movie, what a sweet revenge it could be!