As the most famous deliverer of menhirs [giant stones], the Gallic vivacity of Depardieu finds a role to suit his excessiveness. 
 
"Since I played Obélix, I have some daisies in the head!": Depardieu, like all of the movie's actors, is happy. When accepting the role of the thick Gallic innocent, he offered himself a cure of youth. Astérix was the comic strip of his childhood. Spellbound by the historic characters, he had had the idea, long ago, to dedicate a movie to Vercingétorix. He had even discussed it with historian Georges Duby. Everything has been thought out minutely in "Astérix & Obélix against Caesar", including the changes of mentality since the creation of the comic strip: the Druids are not represented as a laughing matter anymore.

A good magic potion spoonful and Christian Clavier is going to make ticket sales explode.

Gaul would not be anything without Astérix, but Astérix would not be anything without the magic potion. It is the third star of the movie. The one that, in the movies, conjurors up inevitably the words "special effects".  To make Roman soldiers fly like wild ducks, many images are necessary. That means that it was necessary to study the trajectory of a man sent into the air by a left hook as powerful as a bomb blast. Of 1,500 shots in the movie, 200 resort to special effects. So some 200 Romans form a legion of 2,000 men, a dozen extras become a thousand, and Astérix can be trampled by an elephant. To be frank, the recipe of the potion is millions of francs, as many [German] marks, and a lot of know-how. Because the special effects, before pumping up the Gallics and the ticket sales, make for exploding budgets.

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