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!

Luc Besson seems to have no limits, and his visualization of Adele Blanc-Sec from comic to film is a delight for the funny-bone as well as the eyes. In keeping with the setting of the film, Besson occasionally uses slapstick and old school silent movie touches to keep the tone light while continually moving forward. Adele has been compared to Indiana Jones (mainly because they both visit Egypt), but she also could be the sister of Captain Jack Sparrow as absolutely nothing will defer her from her mission. This is an adventure worth sharing, a gentle pleasure from start to finish.

I only discovered this wonderful film this year when it was added to the iTunes library. While Apple frequently manages to deleteriously re-crop movies or otherwise bungle them, it did a good job adding the uncensored "Director's Cut" of this movie. I always prefer subtitled versions to the dubbed ones and this one was no exception. Most of the other reviewers here have noted the film's strengths -- brilliant casting, a fun-filled "Indiana Jones"-type adventure, creative special effects -- so I won't repeat those. (I will say that the most vehement critics seem to have come to the movie with a lot of preconceived expectations, rather than simply let the film be the lighthearted live-action cartoon that it is.) I do have a question for the French speakers out there: What is Adele saying to the horses blocking her cab in Parisian traffic as she returns home with the mummy? The rant is the only place without subtitles in English. My high-school French, while helpful with confirming some aspects of the translation, doesn't cover that outburst. I presume it must be obscene, but I'd like to know what it says.Merci beaucoup!

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!