Just Visiting

Reviewed by:
Eric Alt

There are three great oxymorons: “Jumbo shrimp,” “military intelligence,” and “French comedy.” Those cheese-eatin’ surrender monkeys might know their shit when it comes to brooding, barely intelligible art films, but when they try their hands at laugh-fests it becomes painfully obvious why these fools have worshipped Jerry Lewis for the past 30 years.

Just Visiting is an American remake of the 1993 film Les Visiteurs and features the the original’s stars, Jean Reno (The Professional) and Christian Clavier. Unfortunately, it proves that a cool badass like Reno is better suited to offing people onscreen than fishing for laughs.

Just Visiting is about a medieval nobleman (Reno) and his slave (Clavier) who get magically transported to modern-day Chicago. Once there, they run into painfully obvious slapstick situations (they attack a car thinking it’s a beast, they destroy a TV trying to rescue the little people trapped inside…you get the point) and eventually hook up with Christina Applegate and Tara Reid (OK, so maybe they’re not so dumb). Basically, if Les Visiteurs had been made anywhere outside of France, it would have starred Pauly Shore and Yahoo Serious. However, Just Visiting does move along at a nice clip and is good-natured and light—just don’t expect to remember a thing about it by the time the ending credits roll. We had to go back a second time to take notes.

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