Nothing like a large breath mint after a lavish dinner.
However, the ones
in Jean-Marie Poiré's time-traveling, fish-out-of-water comedy,
JUST
VISITING, taste a bit funny since just moments before they were deodorizing
the water in the urinals in the men's room. Relying heavily on such
bathroom humor, the movie is something of a crowd-pleaser, but I found
it
worth little more than some smiles.
A remake of the 1993 French film LES VISITEURS, JUST VISITING
concerns a
12th century French nobleman, Count Thibault (Jean Reno), and his servant
André (Christian Clavier), who are accidentally sent into the future
by a
wizard. "Lost in the corridors of time," they turn up in a Chicago
museum
in April of the year 2000.
In his strange, new world, Thibault is aided by museum
curator Julia Malfete
(Christina Applegate), who turns out to be 30 generations removed from
the
woman, Rosaline (Applegate), whom he was about to marry back at his old
castle. The story's on-going joke is that Julia doesn't realize that he
is
from the past, even if he does talk, act, dress and smell very strange.
The movie's shtick is one long series of physical comedy
gags, the best of
which are in the trailers. When Thibault and André first see a
car, they
attack it with a vengeance, since they figure it must be a hideous,
fire-breathing dragon. They use their swords to smash it to pieces,
starting with the spearing of the radiator.
When Thibault and André see a toilet, they wash
their faces in it and use
the long white towels beside it to dry off. A $2,000 magnum of Channel
#5
perfume is used for drinking and then bathing. And the automatic icemaker
in the kitchen causes a classic Vaudevillian falling down routine.
Rather than going on with the slapstick examples like the
freeing of the
"Family Feud" figures "trapped" in the TV set, let
me end with the one
serious note in the movie. It stands foursquare against slavery. Makes
you
want to go straight home and emancipate all of your servants.
JUST VISITING runs 1:28. It is rated PG-13 for violence
and crude humor and
would be acceptable for kids about 5 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday,
April 6, 2001. In
the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC and the Century theaters.
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