Just Visiting

What do you get when you remake a French comedy? When this remake is written by one of the best American film comedy writers of the past twenty years? When you temper the effort with Monty Python/U.K. humor and homage? And you set the movie in question in Chicago?

"Just Visiting".

"Just Visiting" is an American remake of a French film. The screenplay is credited (in part) to John Hughes, who gave us such wonderful efforts as "Planes, Trains and Automobiles", "Home Alone", and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (which, basically, is the prequel to "Just Visiting".) It centers on two French actors, and it is set--in that most American of cities--Chicago.

The premise, now: A medieval sorcerer unintentionally sends a French knight and his serf on a trip into the future. The future, in question, incidentally, is modern day Chicago, where the elevated train scares them and the world confuses them to no end. But they, like so many others, come to like the city, love the city, and when it is time for them to return to their time they balk, with an explanation for this from the supposedly ignorant serf: I want to stay. I can eat doughnuts and wear exciting fashions at bargin-basement prices.

I mentioned previously this is a remake of a French film. Like other remakes of French films and movies "Just Visiting" actually works, owing much to the fact it preserves the intent of the original work, and--wonderfully, surprisingly--improves on it in moments that otherwise previously failed.

The success resulting owes much to the direction of Jean-Marie Gaubert, who allows Jean Reno and Christian Clavier room to do what they need to do: Play the fish-out-of-water notion to the max. Reno is Sir Thibault, a French knight who travels to Sussex to marry Rosalind (Christinia Applegate). He is accompanied by his vassal, Andre (Clavier), who performs in this context in such a way that, well, Monty Python: The Next Generation could readily be imagined: He trots along behind the cart carrying the knight and takes his beatings as only a member of the Python troupe might.

I know: What does love and romance, serfs and servitude have to do with time travel? A lot, oddly enough: Thibault screws up his wooing of the beautiful lady in question. So he persuades a sorcerer (Malcolm McDowell) to send them back slightly, ever so slightly, in time for a second chance. A nice notion. But one that goes delightfully wrong: Instead of going back in time they go forward, to modern-day Chicago, when Thibault's great-great-great-great-great (great?) granddaughter, Julia (Applegate, again), assists them in coming to terms with such modern things as skyscrapers, semis, and life at large.

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