A Classic French Farce: JUST VISITING

The French have a theatrical history of excellent farce, so it hardly comes as a surprise that they're fairly good at it on film as well. In the golden age of movie comedy, the days of Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin and Hal Roach, American filmmakers were good at it, too.

Unfortunately, we Yanks seem to have lost the knack for creating first-class farce, which is why we end up with stuff like Mars Attacks!, not to mention Dumb and Dumber and its ilk. There's a big difference between silly and stupid and funny. As an example of that difference, I give you Just Visiting.

Just Visiting, which stars Jean Reno and French comedian Christian Clavier, is directed by Jean-Marie Poire and was adapted by Poire, Clavier and John Hughes from the 1993 French film Les Visiteurs. It is a funny movie; but it's funny in the multi-dimensional way Chaplin's movies are funny, mingling moments of totally improbable chaotic comedy with a tale of the triumph of innocence over evil.

In the 12th century, Count Tybault de Malfete (Reno) travels to England with his family and his faithful serf, Andre le Pate (Clavier), to wed his beloved Lady Rosalind (Christina Applegate). The wicked Earl of Warwick wants Rosalind for himself, so he hires a witch to do away with the competition. The crone proposes to administer a potion to Rosalind that will make her see Tybault as a monster and kill him. Alas! Tybault gets the potion instead, and in an hallucinogenic fury accidently kills Rosalind.

Condemned to die, Tybault sends Andre to find a wizard, hoping to be able to resurrect his beloved. The wiz (a gleeful Malcolm McDowell) has a better idea. He'll send Tybault and Andre back in time to just before the "accident" so they can prevent it from happening.

Instead, thanks to a missing ingredient in the potion, our hero and his trusty villein end up in modern-day Chicago, where they meet Tybault's many-times-great-granddaughter and heir, Julie Malfete (Applegate).The naive Julie is engaged to a smarmy fortune-hunter named Hunter (Matt Ross), who plans to sell off her inheritance and live happily ever after with his sex-kitten "secretary," Amber (Bridgette Wilson).

There follows a thoroughly entertaining romp as Tybault goes looking for a wizard to get him back where he belongs; Andre discovers life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with the help of a free-spirited lady gardener named Angelique (Tara Reid); and Julie takes off her bunny slippers and discovers she has claws.

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