{"id":2179,"date":"2024-08-08T16:22:35","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T16:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2179"},"modified":"2024-10-14T12:41:07","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T16:41:07","slug":"just-visiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/08\/just-visiting\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Visiting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Just Visiting <\/strong>(2001)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hollywood Pictures\/Comedy-Fantasy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, crude humor)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jean-Marie Poire (credited as Jean-Marie Gaubert)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jean-Marie Poire, Christian Clavier and John Hughes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Powell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ueli Steiger\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 6, 2001 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jean Reno, Christina Applegate, Christian Clavier, Matthew Ross, Tara Reid, Malcolm McDowell, Bridgette Wilson, John Aylward, George Plimpton.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $16.1M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I have never seen Les Visiteurs<\/em>, the 1993 French-language comedy upon which Just Visiting<\/strong> is based. It\u2019s an Americanized remake of a movie that was a huge box office hit in its home country. This usually spells trouble (Pure Luck and Father\u2019s Day anyone?), but not this time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In Just Visiting<\/strong>, a pair from 12th<\/sup> century France gets magically transported to 21st<\/sup> century Chicago. It\u2019s your basic fish-out-of-water story with two very confused men attempting to make sense of a time and place totally alien to them. It\u2019s silly and juvenile, but unlike most comedies of its time, it doesn\u2019t automatically go for the gag reflex with gross jokes about bodily fluids and genitalia. Oh, it has its share of rude humor (e.g. a character ends up face-down in a pile of horse manure), but it\u2019s not its sole reason for being. Behind all the shtick is a somewhat sweet love story about the lengths to which a man will go to be with his true love, even if it involves time travel.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Count Thibault Malfete (Reno, Leon the Professional) is all set to marry Princess Rosalind (Applegate, Anchorman) when the ugly hand of fate shows itself in the form of a jealous rival who poisons Malfete causing him to murder his beloved. Don\u2019t you hate it when that happens?<\/p>\n

\u00a0While awaiting execution, Malfete orders his servant Andre (Clavier, Asterix and Obelix) to find a wizard (McDowell, A Clockwork Orange) who can send him back to the moment right before he killed Rosalind. Instead, the incompetent enchanter sends him and Andre into the 21st<\/sup> century where they encounter Julia (Applegate), a descendent of Malfete (a however many great granddaughter). He needs to get back to his own time, but finding a wizard in 2001 Chicago is no easy task.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Furthermore, Malfete\u2019s shocked to learn that certain things from medieval times, the way he treats his servant in particular, are no longer acceptable. Chivalry, on the other hand, is still alive and well. The count takes it on himself to protect Julia from her condescending fianc\u00e9 (Ross, American Psycho) who\u2019s only interested in her wealth. Andre meets and falls in love with Angelique (Reid, Josie and the Pussycats), a sweet girl who encourages him to stand up to his master.<\/p>\n

\u00a0From start to finish, Just Visiting<\/strong> retains its spirit of goofiness with plenty of slapstick humor and cartoonish characters. I don\u2019t really understand all the bad reviews it got. Okay, so it\u2019s not all that well-made. It\u2019s kind of slapdash. The special effects are cheesy. But it\u2019s just so much fun! I can\u2019t, in all good consciousness, knock a movie in which a medieval knight boards the Chicago El on horseback. You\u2019d expect something like that in New York, but Chicago?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Reno and Clavier, reprising their roles from the French-language original, make a funny pair. Applegate has a way of maintaining a sense of dignity no matter what\u2019s going on around her. Reid is cute as kindly Angelique. McDowell has a few funny scenes as the inept wizard who comes to Chicago to fix his mistake. Speaking of the Windy City, writer-director Jean-Marie Poire (who also directed the French original) makes great use of the city\u2019s locations although I suspect that has more to do with co-writer John Hughes (Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off).<\/p>\n

\u00a0I suppose the most important thing about Just Visiting<\/strong> is that it\u2019s funny. It has all the expected jokes one expects from a time travel\/fish-out-of-water comedy. For example, Malfete and Andre get seriously sick on their first car ride. Malfete screams for the driver to slow down even though he\u2019s only crawling along at 20mph. That\u2019s right before they both puke out the window. It\u2019s such a good-natured movie; you don\u2019t mind the recycled gags. It works better than most American remakes of foreign comedies because the material translates well. It\u2019s the kind of movie you watch if you want to shut off your brain for a couple of hours.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just Visiting (2001)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hollywood Pictures\/Comedy-Fantasy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, crude humor)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jean-Marie Poire (credited as Jean-Marie Gaubert)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jean-Marie Poire, Christian Clavier and John Hughes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Powell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ueli Steiger\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 6, 2001 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jean Reno, Christina Applegate, Christian Clavier, Matthew Ross, Tara Reid, Malcolm McDowell, Bridgette Wilson, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Just-Visiting-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2179"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3069,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions\/3069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}