The definite challenge for a film director is his second movie. Many have made a good or even flawed but interesting first feature, and then either showed how good can really be (i.e. Tarantino's Pulp Fiction) or how the hits of their hit'n'miss first effort were just coincidential (i.e. Amenábar's Open Your Eyes). To me, Javier Fesser's Mortadelo y Filemón classifies him as somebody just gifted to be a garbage picker. His first movie The Miracle of P. Tinto was very irregular, it had some great moments (like the opening B&W short) and also tons of unfunny and lame jokes and weirdness for the sake of weirdness. However, the visual aspect of the film, while too tributary of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, made me think Fesser would ever make something of interest.<br /><br />Of course, I was totally wrong. Mortadelo y Filemón was a source material choice that was as commercially safe (given the fame of the comic books, EVERYBODY in Spain would watch it) as artistically risky (not only the comic books are really difficult to adapt to the screen, but everbody has his own vision of what Mortadelo & Filemón should be). Anyway, even an interesting failure would be nice to watch.<br /><br />What Fesser did was the worst comic book adaptation this side of Schumacher's Batman and Robin.<br /><br />OK, I see, Benito Pocino and Pepe Viyuela are reasonable M & F lookalikes (specially Pocino, whose heartwarmingly fun performance is the only good thing in the film), but I'd rather see Affleck and Damon play M & F than endure the debacle that's Fesser's film. And the rest of the cast isn't that good either: The Super is too thin, Bacterio is too fat, and everybody has too much hair. But I wouldn't mind if the performances were adequate. For example, in the comic books, Filemón is a more serious person with very bad luck (he receives all the physical damage that's destined to Mortadelo). In the movie, Filemón is just a permanently angry freak, and is not comprensible why he's the "boss". Also Rompetechos is now a "facha" (Francisco Franco-supporting nostalgic), which in the comic books never was.<br /><br />And the script... Ohhh, the gawd-awful script! I have read a Fesser interview where he said he didn't enjoy the first live-action Astérix movie because no matter how good the lookalikes were, it didn't respect the essential of the comics. Given this isn't it strange that in M & F the lookalikes are much better but the essence of the books is way less respected? Not only Fesser did the same thing than the producers of Astérix (another very bad movie, BTW), which was taking little bits of this and that story and glueing them without much coherence, but Fesser's film makes much less sense. It only resembles the comics in the visuals (which, by the way, still borrows a whole lot from Jeunet), but the plot takes the characters and gives them a 360 degrees rotation (if, in the comics, Ofelia ever kissed Mortadelo, instead of feeling pleased his reaction would be more like puking). Want more badness? It's incredibly boring and incongruous. Want EVEN more badness? Most of the characters, specially the non-comics-based characters Fredy Mazas (Dominique Pinon! Wasn't the Jeunet link already clear enough?), Nadiusko and the Franco-based bad guy Tyrant, have A LOT MORE screen time than M & F themselves. This seems more like "Fredy Mazas' Big Adventure with cameos of Mortadelo and Filemón". And, you guessed it, Fesser is more interested in his obsessions about Catholic Mass songs, butane gas cylinders and spoofing Spielberg movies than in making anything remotely connected to the works of Francisco Ibáñez.<br /><br />This said, and as the 1994 TV cartoon sucked as well (but by different reasons), the only worthwhile M & F screen adaptations are those made in the late 60s and early 70s (El Armario del Tiempo, and the likes).<br /><br />2 out of 10. Avoid like the plague, specially if you are a fan of the comics.