Thursday 5 January 2012

Les Visiteurs / The Visitors (1993)

Jean Reno and Christian Claviers travel from the dark ages in the French comedy The Visitors



In the opening, the brave Godefroy (Jean Reno) defends his king's bride from her vicious uncle. After his fantastic victory he travels to marry his beloved Frenegonde (Valerie Lemercier). On the way he arrests a witch (Tara Gano). After her many attempts to escape she finally drugs Godefroy's water which makes him hallucinate, resulting in him killing Beatirce's father. After being turned down by her he goes for advice to Eusebius (Pierre Vial) a skilled wizard, who sends him trough time but makes a mistake and instead of returning him, he sends him trough time in 1993. There, as fishes out of water Godefroy and his faithful servent Jacquouille (Christian Clavier) they barely find their way around until they meet Beatrice's distant cousin Beatrice (also played by Valerie Lemercier) who believes Godefroy to be her cousin who went missing on a ski trip. Soon many new problems arise as Jacquouille falls in love with a tramp Ginette (Marie-Anne Chazel)  and Jacquoille's distant cousin Jacquard (also played by Christian Clavier).



Just to clear something up before we begin, i consider Les Visiteurs to be one of the finest comedies ever made. Jean Reno and Christian Clavier give fantastic performances and Valerie Lemercier is absolutely breathtakingly good as a baffled dentists wife (a performance honored by a Cesar , equivalent of an Oscar). French , in my opinion, have the best comedies ever and this is their crowning glory. Later on of course there was a mediocre sequel and of course an American version which is one of the worst comedies I ever saw.

All in all Les Visiteurs is an overlooked classic.

RATING: ***** (5/5)

No comments:

Post a Comment