5.9 | / 10 |
Users | 3.5 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
It's 12th century France and Count Thibault of Malfete (Jean Reno) finds his beautiful bride-to-be (Christina Applegate) done in by malevolent magic. So he and his loyal servant Andre (Christian Clavier) request the help of a local wizard to right the wrong and bring his beloved back. But the wizardry goes awry and the pair is transported to 21st century Chicago where they meet Thibault's descendant Julia (Applegate) and her scheming fiancé. With their timeless values of honor and courage, they wreak havoc as they foil diabolical plots in modern-day Chicago and try to find their way back home.
Starring: Jean Reno, Christina Applegate, Christian Clavier, Malcolm McDowell, Tara ReidComedy | 100% |
Fantasy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (448 kbps)
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 2.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
Just Visiting is a 2001 American remake of the 1993 French film Les Visiteurs, a time-travel story about medieval Frenchmen transported into the modern world, sort of a reversal of the concept seen in Timeline, Director Richard Donner's adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel in which modern day archeologists travel backwards in time to ancient France. Both this film and the original 1993 version star Jean Reno and Christian Clavier in lead roles, and Director Jean-Marie Poiré is behind the camera for each, but that continuity doesn't help the American version escape the stigma of playing like a second-rate copycat. It earns some laughs and makes for a pleasant enough diversion, but ultimately feels rather hollow in its lethargic stretches in between its "fish out of water" gags, which are numerous and endlessly humorous.
I'm a professional...swordsman.
Just Visiting just sort of gets by on Blu-ray. Mill Creek's 1080p transfer is decent for a budget title, capturing more than adequate detailing and color. Chain mail armor and finer fabric details tend to impress more than anything else in medieval England, while the modern world features many more amenities and miscellaneous background details to enjoy. Skin textures never reach a level of pristine and intimate excellence, but basic skin imperfections, hair, and makeup come through with serviceable high definition complexity. Colors follow suit. Basic greens and supportive shades in old England present with decent vitality, while there's a much broader array of colors to enjoy in the modern world, all of which find fair saturation, though they lack in-depth color nuance. The image pushes rather flat and a little too smooth. Very light grain and various bouts of print wear are evident. Black levels don't struggle too badly, but flesh tones often appear pasty and a bit uneven.
Just Visiting is another Mill Creek catalogue title with a rather paltry and uneventful Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. As a general rule, it gets the job done, conveying basic speech, music, and sound effects with enough clarity to get the point across, but little more. Dialogue tends to struggle to reproduce lifelike clarity and maintain even-keeled prioritization at reference volume. Music is likewise lacking authoritative detailing, though spacing is never an issue across the front. Sound effects are likewise capably spread across the front two channels. Definition, however, never elevates above a basic crudeness, whether pronounced lightning and thunder effects or minor support details throughout the film.
Just Visiting contains no supplemental content. No pop-up menu is included, and the top menu only offers an option to play the movie. Movie playback begins on disc insertion, foregoing the single-option menu screen.
Just Visiting is just entertaining...in spurts. Reno and Clavier devour their roles and offer some of the most purely enjoyable "fish out of water" bits out there. The rest of the movie, however feels like filler. The good news is that the movie's better moments fill up a good chunk of the runtime, and its downtime doesn't last long enough, at least not until the end, to mess with pace and watchability. Mill Creek's Blu-ray release of Just Visiting features decent 1080p video and flat, forgettable two-channel lossy audio. No extras are included. Make sure to check out the original film and pick this up as a companion curiosity.
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Extended Cut
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