The Visitors Trilogy (1993–2016) & Just Visiting (2001) — "Courage is my creed."

Yes, we're in way. Je Tebou the sixth and his his loyal servant andres. Stupid pleasant, Thank you, sir. Are about to discover that a little magic can go a long way. I've lost them in the corridors of time.

Let's go. They're strangers in a strange land. It's a dragon. It's a red dragon. At top.

The hell are you doing? We have killed it, but with a little help, I need to just understand what has happened to you? I am ely sixth. The wizard sent us in the future. Wow, they just might make it all.

Hi, honey, this is. My god. Run behind the chariots. You can't run behind the car. He's very fat.

He can run sovny miles an hour. Can you have good boots this spring? I need to find a wizard. Now, do you mind if I get some coffee? Fruit?

Time will travel. I've never written the l quite like this before. And the future is history. Dale. Wow, the gentleman CONTI talk the floor.

He's my servant and he's not worthy of our comedy. Thank you, Master, just visiting? What is it? Master? Clean water?

They're bathing in the toilet. The loan towel has a good Fragrance. So, Mike, you and I spent a fair amount of time twenty twenty five watching French comedies, and not just French comedies, but American remakes of French comedies. When I think of French comedies that have American remake, there is literally only one film I think of. It is.

Trace Ombas trays Ombres unonino. No, that would be the Spanish language of Spanish. No, I think of Just Visiting, but I guess more aptly, I think of the original film from nineteen ninety three List Visit Tours, which then had a sequel, The Visitors to the Corridors of Time, which then had a sequel, The Visitor's Bastille Day, which also had an American language remake, which came out not after the first film, but after the second film. That film is titled Just Visiting, also directed by Jean Marie Poier, which is wild that he directed all four films, including the American language remake, which is not really a thing. I mean it, I mean it isn't really and I don't know if well, well, we'll talk about it when we get there.

But Mike White of the Projection Booth, this was a project that you and I had kind of taken on under my advisement because I wanted to talk about these movies with you, and you had never seen them. So I am very excited to talk with you about these movies because you picked out some French comedies last year, and so I decided why not kick off twenty twenty six with some French comedies of my own? Okay, Okay, I hate I'm just kidding. I don't hate it. But what's the term diminishing?

Is that what it means? Oh? God, I think you're thinking of a cliff? Yeah. Oh, because this first movie, The Visitors from nineteen ninety three, wonderful, wonderful film.

Holy cow, was this fun? I had the best time watching this movie. Was tickled pink through the entire experience. Good night, folks. Yeah, then we got the sequels, but yeah, we'll get there.

Chris, When did you first see this one? So? I saw just visiting the original, like the original American remake, not the movie The Visitor. I saw that film, oh, April of two thousand and one. Wow, So you went backwards into it.

I saw just visiting first. Wow. I saw the American language remake first. I saw that when I was eleven years old in theaters I saw that either it wouldn't have been the same weekend, but I definitely saw it in the same movie theme as another film that kind of made an impression on me that I think. I think you and I have talked about it from time to time, but I don't know how you feel about it.

Well, that's not true. I do know how you feel about it in some capacity. Do you remember the film Evolution? Ooh, the Ivan Rightman film with David Ole right right, Yes, your friends have flower Sitter Orlando Jones. Yes, yes, yeah, that was kind of like the It was like Ghostbusters and Men in Black had a baby, and the baby had a lot of birth effects.

Right. Yes, I like Evolution a lot, but that's just me. I also understand for the most part, it's not a great film. I distinctly remember watching Evolution and just visiting in the same movie theater at the AMC in Grapevine, Texas at the Grapevine Mills mall, right next to the Game Works, which was that Steven Spielberg arcade, which I thought was just the coolest fucking thing at the time. So just visiting has made a large impression on me.

Like I said, I saw it in theaters. I actually a long ago, in a pre the Before Times, but like the before before times, if you've listened to this show with any sort of frequency, you'll know. I covered American psychoa a very long time ago, and I interviewed Matt Ross about American Psycho. He was one of the people I talked to, and I asked him about just visiting at the end of the interview, because he's in the American remake, and I'm not sure anyone's ever asked him about just visiting, since I wouldn't be surprised if anyone had, so. Yes, I came into this backwards, but I saw the the Visitors Less Visit tours the French film six months ago.

Oh okay, it was recent, like it was after we had watched our French films for Mike White. It was March or May last year. I was like, okay, like I really like just visiting. I should rewatch that. And then I was like, right, it's a remake of a French language film.

I don't feel as like arms length with French language comedies anymore, given that we watched all those, you know, Francis Webber Films last year, so I fell into this backwards recently, but just visiting the film made a large impression on me when I was in my formative years as an eleven year old and look movies directed by the same director. It's also it's also you know, the same actors, so. It's a small it's a small ish club when it comes to directors directing the remakes of their own work. It's a lot larger than I thought it was. I did some research on that last year.

I always think of like The Vanishing or Funny Games. But looking back, especially in the early days of cinema, when people are just like, oh, well, I had the silent film, I'm going to remake it with sound or those things, that's a huge swath of films. But even past that, there were a lot of films where the filmmakers are like, oh, yeah, yeah, I want to redo this. I mean, the most famous one probably is Hitchcock with the Man who Knew Too Much. Right well, and you know all of the the remake of it.

Aside, Also, this movie has a weird distinction of being John Hughes's last movie, which is also very strange, so there's just like weird stuff about the American remake that make this movie kind of worth talking about, kind of in a just roundabout way. But for me, I fell into this backward. So I'm curious, Mike, you had seen none of these You heard them right? You know, we talked about this a little while ago. I was getting this mixed up with I think it was called The Navigators.

It was a want to say, in an Australian or New Zealand film. It was one of the guys, Vince Ward, who was one of the people that was set to direct Alien three. He was the one that came up with the whole idea of a wooden planet where all of these monks live. So this whole idea of like the prisoners kind of came from him, but instead in his they were monks. And yeah, there's a movie that he made called The Navigators where somehow there's a portal in time and these people go from the dark ages to probably the eighties or nineties whenever that movie came out, Whereas this somehow I had heard of maybe just visiting, I mean it at pretty good cast and you know, it was two thousand and one, so I was kind of paying attention to things, or maybe i'd heard of the Visitors once, but I was not very familiar with this whatsoever.

So and I know I've seen a few of Jean Renaud's French films. I mostly I think that the first time I saw him and really recognized him was probably in Latham Nikita. But then I went back through a lot of Lupa Song's earlier works and he was in one called The Final Battle that I want to say was and I love movies where they don't speak at all, they'll just make noises, and it was him versus another guy at the end of the world, old kind of thing, and I remember really enjoying it. So when I heard Genrenau was in this, I was like, yeah, please sign me up, especially to see him speaking French, which is something I don't generally do because I'm more familiar with his American films big time. I mean, starting with the first Mission Impossible film onward, he's just been kind of an ever present figure.

You want to know what I saw genre in first, You're gonna laugh Leon the Professional, nineteen ninety eight's cinematic classic Godzilla. Oh right, He wasn't that wasn't he. Yeah, the King, That's what I remember genre as as that character, a Frenchman who loves Elvis, And that's right, you know what. Say what you will about nineteen ninety eight's Godzilla, and people have said plenty. I don't hate that movie.

It has a very special place in my heart. Frankly, I remember a lot about it. But Genrenau is good in that movie. He's funny in that movie. Again, say which you will about the movie, Say which you will about Baby raptor Godzilla in Madison Square Garden and all that wild, wild, wild decision making that in this day and age feels dangerous compared to the kind of shit we get now.

I mean it really, I mean in a lot of ways, like nobody would be doing anything like that with Godzilla now, like you you're crucified. Literally, you'd be crucified if you did anything like that now with Godzilla. Well, what you have to do is just renamed it as Cloverfield and kind of get out of there. You know. The first Cloverfield Monster is basically their first Cloverfield movie is basically America's Godzilla.

And it's kind of a shame that we never got back there again. I mean those other Cloverfield movies. The second one was good. I gotta talk about the third one, or. Or possibly a fourth one, a fifth one.

God, maybe maybe Cloverfield meets Stranger Things and Netflix can just have a big old party. Yeah, milk that cow guy. Speaking of cow milking, there are two sequels to The Visitors. We'll talk about the sequels, but let's talk about the original first, and I think the remake I think will probably take up Those two will probably take up a lot of the time, but the second and third they have some things to talk about. You enjoyed the first one the front Yes, same.

I would say it's if you look at the original and you look at the remake. It's interesting that the remake came out after the second movie but has nothing from the second movie in it whatsoever, which I actually think really works to the benefit of the remake, because the remake is not bad. I actually think the remake is fun and everybody in it kind of shows up, and shockingly, it has Tara Reid in it, and and she's not a complete mess. She's not known for being a great actress, but she kind of plays charming as well. I think It's funny that they really practiced restraint with the remake of the American the remake American version to not have any of the stuff from the second film, because the first film, I think of all of these films, is the best one, and I think it it not only nails the tone of this kind of like Monty Python adjacent.

I watched the film with my friend Lindsay and she was like, this is kind of like Monty Python ish and I was like, that's about the closest thing you could compare it to because and this is just me. And again, I wonder where you come in with this, Like French comedies, comedies in general, of the non English variety, be it Hindi comedies, be it German comedy films or Mexican comedy films, there is something lost in the translation. Comedy films, comedy films of foreign languages are not films I search out because they are the hardest sometimes to understand. Not because what they're saying is hard, not because what they're saying is complicated, not because what they're saying is challenging, but because sometimes there is just something lost in the cultural translation of what it is.

I'm just not French. There are some things that are just French isms that I will never understand, and some of this movie traffics in that. So this was probably a harder ask for either one of us than it seems, because comedies are hard to talk about. Then foreign language comedies tend to be really I mean, I love Hindi films, but even I don't search out Hindi comedies because the ones that I've seen, I'm kind of like, I think I must be missing something, like and I can't do anything about it, Like there's nothing I can change about that. I can't magically become French overnight.

Well, Hans heads off, I should say to the subtitlers and the translators, because they captured quite a lot the whole thing of the Well, we'll get into the characters, but the one character's name basically being Shakas and just knowing, like reading that and I'm like, oh, okay, his name's Jackass, all right, I get this, And some of those play on words I thought translated very well when it came to that. I think it helps that it's say Roman language, you know, French, so we're not completely lost from it. But yeah, I'm sure that there's a lot of jokes that I did not get at all, but what I got was wonderful. And I do like how violent the French film is, Like we'd be violent comparatively to the American one, Like they they don't, they don't pull any punches, Like I think within the first five minutes of the movie you have a guy getting decapitated in a woman just being point blanked with a crossbow.

Yes, yeah, and then a hilarious freeze frame afterwards. Like I appreciate that this film is just kind of like slapsticky violence too, which kind of works in its favor given the theory that you know, Christian Clavillier and Genrea are too medieval, you know, Squire and Night, so violence is not something that they're unused to. It's kind of just part of their daily life. You know, he's hit, he's genre no, hits Christian Clublier quite a bit in this movie, or kicks him and you know, punches him or pushes him with some force like those those things. I think, like that's kind of what's missing a little bit from the American one.

Like this movie is kind of mean in a way, Like and I like that it's mean, because I think that maybe that's the americanness of the other one, Like the American one feels a little too nice, you know, like the French one feels a little mean, which I appreciate tonally. I think even the sequels aren't nearly as mean as this first movie. I feel like the sequels they were like, oh, this is a hugely popular film, let's let children into the audience, and they just kind of dummed everything down. That's how I feel anyway. Watching this the first one, I'm like, oh, this is actually pretty sophisticated.

I like this relationship. It's not just relying on how bad these guys smell, because that becomes the thing to go to for the sequels and even a lot with the American remake is these people smell. Bad, right, which is a like the lowest of low hanging fruit when it comes to Jos with this kind of stuff. And especially because as an audience member in a movie theater, unless you're seeing this in Odorama, I'm not getting that. So I just have to think to myself, I wonder how bad these guys smell.

I imagine it's pretty bad. But other than seeing people's faces react. They don't. They don't do that like a Ryan Reynolds where you try to describe the smell all these different ways, you know, the the way that they described Deadpool looking when he got of his cancer and everything. You don't have that type of thing where it's like, oh, it smells like a monk just threw up into you know, like something like that.

You know, like I have no frame of reference. I'm like, okay, I guess they smell bad then okay. Right, yeah, it smells like the inside of King Louis's bedpan or something like that. There's right, there's none of that like I always think of Anchor Man, you know, you know it smells like bigfoot stick or when they're talking about Black Panther by Odeon. It's like, that's how you do that scene, like short sweet to the point you did it like four or five times, and you pick the one that vibed the best, that worked the best, like that fucking Ghostbusters twenty sixteen film.

Not no so, but yeah, this movie has like those moments that like are like maybe not the first one, but definitely the second and third one where it's just like you could have done so much more in those moments. But you're just like, they smell bad. It's like, again, are we missing something like maybe in the translation and they are saying that, and the subtitlers just aren't catching it and they're just dumbing it down so they don't have to type everything out like that could be it. But I can't imagine that's it all the time, right, I just I also can't imagine that the same people who wrote the first film wrote the second and third film, and the jokes in the second and third film are lesser jokes of the first film.

It suffers from that thing that so many comedy sequels do, which is, oh, it was funny the first time, Well it won't it be funny the second and third and fourth and fifth time. It's like, I mean, yes, but it won't be as funny. And maybe if you belabor the point, you can bring it back around and you can get back there. And that does I mean that can happen. It does happen.

They just never get there, at least not on the second and third one. The first one they kind of do with some of the gift, but not in the second and third one. Well, it is interesting, so you mentioned directed by Jean Marie Foire, and then you've got the writers of him and Christian Clavier, who is also Jacas in the film. And he's the most troublesome character to me, And I just wonder is he tempted more and more or is it, like Jean Reno said, you know what, I'll be in your sequels. But I just don't want to be the star of the sequels because it feels like between the first and second movies, we flip who we're seeing the most, and we just get so much Chakas and so little pap in Cord or Compty or whatever his name is.

Yeah, so it's like we don't even see Jaquas until like five minutes maybe into the first movie, and it's not him just mugging for the camera. And I really like him in this first movie. I just want to make that clear. I think he is great in this first film. I think he adds the right amount of lunacy, but a little bit of him goes a long way, and you see that in the sequels where you're just like, wow, can he be any louder?

I mean some of the jokes in the I want to say, it's the second film with the microphone, it's like this loud guy, are is given a microphone. That's the last thing this guy needs because he is so fucking loud, and it's just like, get him off of the screen, give me more genre nou And this first film really fills that grief. I think Christian Clavalier is like the gentleman that we saw earlier this year than those Francis Feber films Na Gerard Mardiux the other one right where he is like so clearly a French icon at this point because he is I don't know how much research you did into Christian Clavalier, but Emil Macron in twenty twenty three said, you have been all the faces of the families of France, the infatuated son in law, the elite, the bewildered uncle, the pretentious cousin, the jealous husband, the cantankerous father.

We have grown an age with you, and our children will grow an age with you. That's what Macron said not three years ago about Christian Clavalia. So for me, I agree with you, like it feels like almost like you have put your the horse before the cart with those second and third movies, However, I'll say this much, if people willing to talk about you that way, it's probably because you may have oh yeah, let it kind of not go to your head. But like, it's hard to practice restraint when people talk about you that way. It's hard to practice restraint when you know that people are showing up because you're in the movie.

And I think that the second and third movies really show a lack of restraint from from the director, who, again, like you mentioned, wrote the film. You know, Jean Rouie Prae writes the second and third and first film and the American language one as well. They practice a lot more restraint in this first film than they did in the second and third one. And to your point, Jean Renau is such a big part in this movie but not in the second and third one, and it is so noticeable that you do wonder like was he just like I'll only come back if I'm at a like very much like whatever the minimum is for this participation that you expect out of me, because he doesn't feel like he's part of the second movie.

Third movie really doesn't like the second movie, I think just kind of wastes his character because the first movie is kind of so novel with the oh and he's meeting his like descendant, and then there's also a descendant of the other guy who's played by him. We haven't really mentioned that, by the way, speaking of Indian cinema and speaking of Eddie Murphy, you know the Eddie Murphy of it all. Christian Clavllier technically plays two different characters in this movie, and then in the next movie he plays three different characters, and then in the last movie he plays once again only two different characters. But in this movie, the best one, he plays himself, the surf to gen Renau, and then he plays Jacques Henrie, who owns Jean Renaud's castle.

Now, so the whole play is the servant. The family of the servant now owns the castle of the master's castle. That's kind of the joke that they go back to several times. I'm with you, I don't think I even needed him twice in this movie. However, this is where it's done.

The best for Shure is definitely not in the second one, and in a lot of ways, I'm glad they didn't do that. In the American Lie, the Matt Ross character is a well the change to the way the plot kind of works in on itself. Yeah, that's true, and that he's not a snooty hotel manager, because you get so much with this being two guys from the Middle Ages coming to modern times. When this was released, you get all of the you know, the comedy of errors, the misunderstanding, all those kinds of things, and then also the class stuff because you've got a master and a servant coming forward in time. And it's just like, okay, this is a different type of relationship.

Well we call it by other things. Now, that's right. We don't literally throw scraps to poor people. We just figuratively throw scraps to poor people in these days, we rightno do that, yes, so, but yeah, to have that relationship too, and to have you know, the the other Jakanda, as you said, the who's the snooty hotel guy. So it's like, oh, okay, or is that a hotel or is that the.

Yeah, it's it's well it's but it's it's the castle that right turned into a hotel into a hotel, and he can't manage it at all, Like he can't keep it in working order at all. Right, And that's where all of their stuff is secreted away. I mean I do like that as well, this kind of bill and tedness of it where it's like, oh, we left this thing here, you know, a century ago or a millennium ago, because it's what like eleven thirty something that they're coming from, so like it's. Like a thousand years almost a thousand years later. Yeah, so it's like, oh, we left this thing here, you know, and we've got this and they know the whole layout.

Like once they break through that wall, they're like, okay, yeah, I can, I can navigate all this stuff. I mean, I really like this. The the inciting incident, even in the first film is so much better than some of these others where it's like, uh, you know, it's a he and I love this stuff with the witch that they capture this witch and they put her in this little wicker cave cage. How you were talking about Monty Python and it feels very Monty Python us. There's also a little bit of like check comedy in here for me, especially when she's in the cage and you see your arms start to extend out so she can put this stuff into yeah, put this stuff into his flask, and that he gets this whole like hallucinating that a bear is chasing his fiance and he shoots the bear, but it was actually her father, right, and so then it's like, fuck, now, we got to go back in time and undo that incident.

And it was interesting that they never do the what happens if you meet yourself from an earlier timeline because I think they're always going backwards and forwards the right way that they wouldn't run into themselves. But that whole idea of we got to go back, we got to go back, and then they fuck up the formula, and then that whole fuck up the formula thing becomes the motivating factor for like so much of this and the sequels, and it's like, oh god, we really don't need that, Like fucking up one time that's all. That's that's all we need. We don't need to have all of these different ways. And it just see, it seems like such a big deal in this first film to get this wizard to make time travel formula that in the rest of these it's like, oh, well, you know, the lady, she can just make it.

Oops, she put in Grand Marnier. Shouldn't have done that. Yeah, it uh, you know what it feels like. It feels very evil Dead. Yes, yeah, it's like, oh, you know, like a Klawtu of Breda, like you know, it's like that.

I mean, like, but there's a little bit of that at the end of Army of Darkness. You know, spoilers for a movie that's like thirty plus years old. But I mean at the end of Army of Darkness, he doesn't well, I. Slept too long. Yeah, it just depends on which episode or which version you're watching.

Well, I guess technically there is only one that's canon now, which is whatever the one that Ash versus Evil Dead follows off of, because that's canon. So I assume it's I think he gets back to it's whatever, it's whatever, it gets back to smart. But there are those endings in an Evil Dead or wh an Army of Darkness where he sleeps too long or he's and you know this movie, like this series traffics in that. Like, be honest with you, I actually appreciate the American remake for not doing any sort of chicanery at the end. It's like, and that's it.

That's the end of the story. Like, I actually kind of appreciated that like, given that the second film just kind of I really struggled to understand what was going on in the second film. It's fascinating because I kept thinking when I was watching the second film, it just felt so halfass. I was like, did they do a Back to the Future two and three? Did they film this and the next one altogether?

Because it just feels like there's so much stuff missing from part two that I'm like, oh, yeah, well, they'll just roll right into part three, not realizing that there was an eighteen year lapse between the two films. Because then when I'm watching the third film, not knowing when it came out, I'm just like, holy shit, these guys look so old. What happened? And then they explained it away in the plot they go, oh, yeah, the corridors of time, they're really screwy. They'll be aging ten years every day or something.

And that really never comes back until right at the end when they start to get the big nose and the Goydert kind of thing. Otherwise it's just, oh, yeah, these guys are twenty years older than they were in the last film. I can't imagine being someone who enjoyed the second film, which a lot of people did, made a lot of money. Second alum, I'm sure film in nineteen ninety eight and going, oh my god that we're left at of a cliffhanger here that's not gonna be answered for damn near twenty years. Mm hmm.

Well, and I'm still waiting for the end of three now, Oh. My god, right right, because hey, because when given the opportunity just end this fucking thing, we pivot once again. I was kind of disappointed at the end of the third movie. I'm by kind of, I mean I was immensely disappointed at the end of the third movie. I was immensely disappointed at the end of the second movie because the end of the second movie was that back to the future too, where it's like, oh so, now this is not even a complete thing, right now, we have to come back to this at some point to see how this story wraps up, because no second movie could ever just be another movie.

It has to be a story that must be wrapped up in the third film. I was watching an interview recently with I would say someone we both probably think very highly of, seventy five year old Ron Pearlman, who talked about speaking of third movies never getting made that third hell Boy movie, and he was like, I would still do it today as a seventy five year old. He's like, the fans deserve it, the fans are owed it, and you know what, like, if you watch this second movie, I don't know how you couldn't feel owed a third movie, given that the filmmakers left it completely wide open again and for how successful this franchise seemingly is in France, like, but then to wait eighteen years and for it to be whoa wow, what you get after eighteen years, which is, oh yeah, the third movie is I get what they were going for.

I actually appreciate that they're going back to something they mentioned in the first movie, which is, you know, oh, well, you know, Jean Renaud had this descendant who was alive in the revolution and he, you know, he fought for the rights of the servants and the rights of the people, and that got him killed. And Jean Renaud's goes good, right, which is fucking hilarious for them, we throwaway gag to then be an entire movie and it never even gets nearly as funny as that throwaway gag is a shame because it is it is smart to go after that gag because I wouldn't expect it, but as a whole movie, but like you don't do anything with it, and that's kind of a shame really, m M. Yeah, it just it. It did not do anything for me the whole I mean, like I was saying, Jacash just gets louder and louder and more and more in the center with all of these and yeah, playing the dual roles again.

And the thing I liked about the first movie, just to go back to that is the pacing of it and just how wild the movie moves. Like as I was watching it, it felt like my head was spinning a little bit in a good way where I was just like, wow, they are not letting any air between these scenes. They're just move and move and moving, and you know, it's what a good cow many does where we set up a basically a little bit of a setup and then a punchline set up in a punchline, and each one of these scenes it feels like it's very skit, like you know, very very much, just a little vignette, yes, and it's they add up. They keep going, they keep moving, they go back to each other. Sometimes you have the whole thing of like the husband.

So they end up going to this house or they find this woman, and I think it's through like because of what they're wearing or what they're speaking. And it's been like I watched the other three this week, the first one I watched a few weeks ago, and so if I forget a couple of the details, I apologize. But they end up being with this family I think it's Jeannette maybe employees, Jeanpierre or something, and they they're like a normal family and they've got kids and this whole thing of like them they do have kids, right, yeah, no, they do that, yes, okay, because the kids kind of disappear and. Maybe thirty seconds okay, hey, you see them, and then they get referenced at the end when Jean Renault's like, you know, I will be with you always through your children, and you like, right, your kids that we saw once, yes, which is fine, Like I don't need kids in a comedy, like kids in movies don't necessarily add to anything.

No, and not with these jokes. And that's the thing, is like, because if you had the kids, then the kids would be like, oh here, let me explain to you medieval person how this works. Whereas adults are just like, well, here's the toilet, and then they leave the room and next thing you know, they're splashing their face and drinking out of the toilet because it's fresh water for them. And it's like a kid would be like, no, no, no, no, but let me let me help you out here, because this was me a few years ago kind of thing, whereas adults are just like, these are two adult men who are in this world, and they just talk in a very strange way, dressed very oddly, but I'm just going to kind of let them walk around and not give them the adult supervision, but the whole thing of like the husband who's a dentist, and I love that the dentist office is in the house, which is very true to Europe, where you go to somebody's house for that service rather than to an office, which is fascinating.

To Meco factory. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's like, this is really kind of cool. I like all of that stuff, and you just drop almost all of that when it comes to the rest of these films. And it's just especially like just the relationships between the family that we get with the French Revolution.

I don't know how these people are related to each other. I can't really figure out what the relationships are because it feels like we just get dropped into the middle of five French people that I don't know what their motivations are, right, other than we are rich and we're running away from the peasants who are now killing all of us, which in twenty twenty six I'm like, okay, yes, please. Right, I know that was that was the thing that made me laugh. You know, The Visitors three came out in like twenty sixteen, so we're we're a little far removed from it. But yeah, I'm just like, yeah, fucking roast them.

Who cares eat them alive? Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I know. Robe Spears is not supposed to be a good guy, but he's kind of the hero of this story to me. And the whole thing is like when they go to the restaurant or the inn, I guess it is, and they're like throwing their noses up when it comes to the nettle soup, and it's just like, oh, this is so disgusting. It's like, yeah, this is what regular people eat.

You know, sorry about that, you know, lady who has the inflatable wig, which might have been my favorite gag in the entire thing, her riding wig versus her day to day wig. But otherwise I'm like, yeah, I don't care about any of this stuff. And the way that they escape, you know, That's what I was saying about the pacing, is that this has that same breakneck pace but doesn't really seem to ever circle back. You know. It feels like, Okay, we escaped from the gendarmes in this courtroom, but they're really not after us after five minutes.

It's just like we have to be careful of peasants with red hats. And that's about it, right, Yeah, the uh it's funny. You know. The second movie does that typical thing that so many second movies do, which is like try to like bring in complicated stuff for no reason other than because and like the second movie is overly complicated for a comedy about two time travelers. There's well, his dad is gonna die, and his dad is dying because of the timeline, because that's like, wow, we're not even ten minutes into the movie, and I'm already confused because again, like they just it wants to be high concept, when what made the first one so great wasn't a high concept.

It was the kind of ensemble comedy of it all. It was the Jean Renau and Christian Clavallier like back and forth. It wasn't the like, oh, the kind of halfway sci fi time traveling. That was not the draw, and that seems trying to be the second the drawn. The second movie, it's like, oh, it's like time travel and more time travel, and they're going backwards and forwards and he's stuck in the past.

Now he's stuck in the future, and now they go all the way to the revolution time and it's just like, oh my god, like what will it ever end? And no, in the third movie, it's now a fucking period piece. And I think the third movies not only suffers from it being a period piece and not necessarily being very funny, because it's not that the French Revolution isn't funny, but they don't do anything overtly funny with it. No. Uh, it really suffers from not having some modern day goings on in twenty sixteen.

I would love to see these two bozos interacting with the world of the iPhone and the world of all kinds of things, and they're just like no, no, no, see like the French Revolution, that's what you were wanting to see, and it's like, no, that's not what I wanted to see. And I really don't want to see them in Nazi times either, which was just like the when I saw that there were Nazi flags about the castle, I was like, this is the hardest left turn possible. But it also tracks with the twenty sixteen of it all, and here come the Nazis, Like of course, of course twenty sixteen was full of Nazis in more ways than one, and it's not surprising that they've come for just visiting, right. But the Third One practice is the least amount of restraint of this franchise, because the Third One really just has nothing of value or substance to add at all, like literally, and.

It's like they're playing around with historical figures. I mean marat Is in this film, which was making me laugh, and they make reference to Napole again and sometimes Jackass's relative looks like Napole again. Well, and they at the end of the second movie it is Napoleon is right, Okay, yeah, that's what I thought. So bizarre are like it's yeah, it's the third movie would have totally been fine if it had come out in two thousand and one, right, yeah, and then you would have gotten, like, you know what you would have gotten in twenty sixteen, you would have gotten like just visiting for where it's like you know the fourth one, where it's kind of this return to form and they're you know, coming into the now times and you're not having to like tie up the loose ends of the previous film.

Like that's the other thing. They're tying up the loose ends of a movie that's twenty years old. Wow right, wow, Well that many of them no loose ends to tie up, you know, and when they do, it's like I don't care about this stuff. Well the loose end of them being in the revolution time and that's about it, which could have been solved very easily, like oh god, yes, it wasn't a requirement that could have happened off screen for God's sakes, Like I I don't find the Revolution to be particularly uh interesting as a setting, like ley Miz is not something that resonates with me particularly particularly, so this is kind of again like this third movie is again kind of further afield than I would like to get with French history.

I find the third movie outside of the History of it All to just be kind of interminable, like there's it is no laughs, there's no jokes. It's a period piece that's not funny, but it's supposed to be funny. The intent is to be funny, and yet it is so unfunny that it feels like a waste of time. And I hate to say this, and I know we've had this conversation before on many podcasts, but I'll say it here again because we're talking about a comedy, which we don't do very frequently. Last time we talked about a comedy was Naked Gun.

The Naked Gun Liam Neesen film. Right, a comedy that is unfunny might be the worst kind of movie. Oh god, Yeah, it was like in my Skin Crawl. And I felt bad because I enjoyed that first movie so much and was just looking forward to these other ones. By the time we got to the end of the second one, my wife's like, how many more are there?

And I'm like, well, a direct remake and a remake and then a direct sequel. She's like, oh okay, so I got up early yesterday to watch the third one, just to try to help her not have to see the third one. And yeah, I was like, it just felt It's only an hour and forty nine minutes, but it felt like is five hours long. It felt like we were watching Lemez or something. Yeah, the third The third one is one of those like I have seen it now and I never need to watch it again.

And frankly, it is now probably on a very short list of things that are some of the worst things I've seen for a podcast. And I'm not gonna lie if if you ask me to name some of those things. Their comedy Funny Money's up there. This is now in contention with Funny Money for one of the worst things I've seen. This third Visitors Casino Royale the original also a comedy, one of the worst, like something I would never want to watch again.

I would dread rewatch it. Oh yeah, because I've done two episodes on it now and I would never want to watch it again. This third Visitors movie is up there, and frankly the second one too. Like the second one, the second one is the longest of the and it not only feels that way, it it acts like it too. It acts like it has something to say, it acts like it has some point that it's doing some fun, kind of high concept thing, and it's ultimately not.

Like the film ends is so uninteresting. And then to know that the third movie does nothing with it ultimately just makes it that much worse. It makes it makes the American Remake seem so much more desirable if you want to watch a sequel to the original, because you know it's a remake, but it is different enough from the original that you can enjoy it for its own reasons. And they're still funny. Jean Renaud and Christian Clavillier are funny in the American Remake.

They're not funny in the second and third sequels, and that's shocking. I think the most shocking thing is that the remake came out after the second one. Yeah, the timeline, I was just like, am I reading this right? This doesn't seem right at all? But yeah, And then, like I said, I had no idea.

When they showed up and they looked so old, I was like, oh, all right, I guess we're this is how we're doing it now eighteen years later. And let's also, you know, they they also pulled a Mummy to Mummy three here. So in the first movie is so good as be A or Frenegonde, whichever character you want to call her. But Muriel Robine in the second film is not the chemistry that she is with Jon Renau is not the same, and it is noticeable. She doesn't even have the same uh chemistry with Jean Pierre, her husband in the second film.

Like it's so noticeably different. I mean, she's probably a great actress, but like that they went with such a different build for her, and she has a different attitude to everything. She's so much more like, oh, gotta take care of this, oh yo, and the other one seemed genuinely distressed, and I like that. I would. Yeah, she was pitch perfect in that first movie, and I was like, what are we doing now, Like, okay, we're just gonna call this woman by the same name.

But she looks nothing like the other woman, not even the color of her hair. Yeah. When no, when I was when I was watching it with my friend, I was like, oh, by the way, like that is the same character. She's like, that's what I thought. But I was in surre and I was like, yeah, you could you could be mistaken for not realizing it, given that the movie doesn't fucking do anything, And look, how does one do something like that?

Like there's you know, I think what Iron Man two is gets a little cheeky with it. Uh what is it? Like? Don Chiedold says something like, yeah, something you look different, masks different, something something. Speaking of the Mummy, they never mention it at all.

They don't even draw notice to it at all, which which will be amusing if they draw attention to it in the fourth Mummy movie. That right, that's undoubtedly making where they're coming back and recasting Rachel Weiss. So it's it's weird because sometimes it doesn't matter and it doesn't add or detract. In this film, the second film's case, it detracts completely, like it's yeah. And the only part of the third movie that I actually was like, oh, okay, that's that's kind of nice was when Marie Marie Ann Chazelle comes back, who plays Jeanette in the first two films, when she comes back in the third one, uh for a little while, and she's married to like a black guy who is just like one of the more interesting characters in the movie.

But ultimately not even anything to do. Like she's the most interesting part of that third movie because again, like she's technically the only returning cast member other than Clavalier and Renault. And am I getting this right? That in the second movie they think that she's from the past, but yeah, okay. Well Clavalier, the version from the present, is convinced that she is also from medieval time.

Right, just because she is. Yeah, it also very loud, right, got the missing tooth and all that, and yeah, she's she's basically a bag of the lady in the firste oh, just kind of forget that. By the time we get to the second movie. It's like, Okay, now they're I guess because they're living well because of the jewels and that kind of stuff. But I don't know.

That's the logic that the American films right, right, that's me and that's and I think that's probably what's informing the way I think about the French film, right because written by the same people ostensibly other than John Hughes. So I do like the idea at the end of the American film where they're in Vegas. I'm like, these two people in Vegas together with this money is a bad idea, and also like they will not be able to make this last and they will just become hobos and like drug addicts. The story doesn't have a happy ending. Folks like, so should we talk about the remake?

If you want to? Yeah, I didn't. I didn't know kind of what you're you know, like, if you had any more thoughts on those first three, I think you're to your point. The first movie is the best one. The second one I think as very little of value other than that scene with the firefighters where they're getting shot through the windows by the Hosen, which is very funny, practical comedy.

The third movie, like I said, is one of the worst things I've seen in it. In some times it's just it's an unfunny movie. Like and that's what else does one need to say about a comedy If a comedy doesn't make you laugh like that right there, failed the assignment. I can't do anything else. If if I ask you to bake me a cake and you bring me a burrito, what the fuck do you expect me to do?

I'll eat the burrito. It might taste good, but it's not a cake, And that in and of itself, I can't do anything with it. If your comedy's not funny, I can't help you. And it's like it's not just me, it's you as well. So if you want to move on to the remake, we can.

I didn't know how much else you want to say about those first three. Well, I think we'll probably fall into that as we move forward talking about the remake, because there are so many market differences. And I was shocked as hell to find out yesterday that there are two pretty distinct versions of The Visitors. One's The Visitors and the other one is Li visitur Ina Emerque, where there's a whole different opening to the film. I don't know if you got a chance to look that link that I sent you yesterday, but the opening of the film is at the museum where we have Christina Applegate, and I'll probably refer to everybody by their actor names, since I know most of these actors.

All she is donating this part of a castle that she owns, and we get that later on that that's what's going on. But this is what introduces George Plimpton to the film. This is what has you know, the introduction of her and of her fiance big Bear, and just like then we moved to the past, and even the order of events in the past is in a different order. Like there's the attack on the village first where the our hero genre No sees some wrongdoings going on, and then it moves into that, and then it moves into the now we're taking the the carriage to the castle thing where they like kick Jacquas off of the back of the carriage and all this stuff. So all of that stuff is in complete different order.

It's a lot later that we get the one guy who goes to the witch to get the potion to basically make sure that Genre know or sorry that his fiancee goes crazy and that who I thought, well she is played by Christina Applegate, that she would go crazy and something something something, But instead we get the switch aroar with the glasses. So yeah, it's so different throughout that and then even just through little bits and pieces. But yeah, definitely we'll talk about the ending as well, because that ending is really different for this French version. So and that's so that's the difference between the UK cinema cut and the French DVD cut, which is which yeah, like it's what's funny is like you said, like there is there are huge differences, but at the same time, like I don't think it changes the makeup of the movie so much.

Is just like changes the order of things, you know. And and like you said, like they still kind of address some of the stuff that's missing from that alter, you know, the original cut versus the alternate cut. They still mention some of the stuff about the castle and things, so they still address it. But I'm very curious what did you think of the American language remake, because we I kind of haven't asked you, so what did you think of it? So real quick, I just want to paint you a picture of me with my laptop on, watching the American version with my headphones on, and then having the French version on my television and occasually having to fast forward one or pause the other, just so I could watch the French version with the American voice.

Amaze, so amazing. That's what I was doing with this film, Brains. I thought that it was decent. I thought it was a decent film. There are parts that I wish were a little bit different.

I mean, I really the whole idea of her selling the castle and the money that's motivating it. I guess it is much more of an American thing. But at the same time, the one thing that I kept thinking of was, gosh, when it came to the French film, the French have been living in that country for so long that they could go back and forth for you know, a thousand years, whereas America being such a young nation for US invaders that came over. I mean, yeah, okay, you go back in America's history to eleven hundred, You're not seeing a whole lot of white people. It's not the my descendants or my predecessors did not live here a thousand years ago.

So such a marked difference when it comes to just that the premise has to change so much that I guess that their souls are entwined with the castle bricks themselves. Thus they can travel from France in the eleven hundreds to Chicago. There's mister Hughes's influence. I suppose Chicago of two thousand and one did this come out? So yeah, two thousand, two thousand and one.

Yeah, So it was just like, why is it a Chicago folks? Because John Hughes and. We get to see that Fountain from Married with Children and Christina Applegate's there, so I'm laughing about that. So that was a nice little inside Joe Well. And it's just, you know, like it feels if you know, what's a John Hughes movie.

There are parts of it that feels very John hughesy in and like, you know, the Chicago of it all kind of like they you know, I mean, because John Hughes was John Hughes was not unknown for high concept stuff. I mean when I think of some of the stuff that people really resonate with John Hughes, I mean, one of the things I think about is Weird Science, and that's a pretty weird out there movie. And oh yeah he wrote especially when Anthony Michael Hall turns into a black man at one point. No, no, when he starts talking about I called her every day on the telephone, that whole thing. Do you not remember the scene I'm talking about.

I haven't seen Weird Science at a long time. He's doing the worst racist black voice you could possibly admit the ship. I thought you were just making a a c Thomas Howell sol Man. No, No, I was like, is he just doing a soul? Is he Riffing on soul Man once again.

No no, no, no crossover the new weirding Way Media podcast Riffing on soul Man with Hiking Chris. That's all we do is just riff about it for like a few hours. We come back the next week, we riff about it again, next week, riff about it still. And the funny thing is it was all just a marathon, forty eight hour riffing session that we cut into our long chunks. You think, how long do you think you could riff about that for only four minutes?

It's just could you could you riff that long about something like that? Could you? Could you? Could you pull out a nice long riff? No?

I don't think so. I could probably do an episode on it, so I could talk for at least an hour and a half about it, and but I'd probably be focusing at least in a half an hour on Chet and the grease sya pork sandwich served in a dirty ash tray. I would definitely be talking about the Michael Berryman character and how he's a teacher. Yeah really what about O time? Talking about Boy and Go yes of course, and how they use that sample from Brida Frankenstein.

Yeah, oh yeah, that's right. Yeah. So there's there's your three segments right there. All right, we'll be back right after these brief messages, that's right. And then then all right, we're back and we're talking about weird science.

I really want to talk about these science of weird science. Do you think that. Well, let's see in a modern day where we've got Megan too and companions, and there was that one with Megan Fox that was recent. I mean, let's talk about. Where she plays a giant chicken.

So does that count maybe? But yeah, the whole idea of these pseudo females, which is interesting that they do, go all the way back to Briana Frankenstein. But really, we could even go back to science fiction's earliest film adaptations of Yeah, I'm Metropolis here. Yeah, so there we go. There's there's a little taste of the Projection Booth episode for you.

Of Weird Science. Somebody, somebody please donate at whatever level forces Mike to do things. Yeah, become the assistant to the regional manager on my Patreon. That's right. Good lord.

I'm glad we watched the remake because I think the remake actually makes a case for being the only other thing of this you should watch. I agree. I did love the remake, but I liked it quite a bit, and it's different enough, Like they don't just do a straight recycling of jokes for the most part, and when they do recycle one joke, I'm just like, it's not funny in this For whatever reason, it's very funny in the first movie when Jacas is grabbing the sconce on the wall and rips it out and then it goes out and he's just like so puzzled about it, and then he walks along and he grabs another one and keeps doing that. That's very funny in the first movie. And I think it's because it's at that very posh hotel and we can tell how angry the other guy's going to get because it's his hotel and Jakas is destroying it.

In this movie, it doesn't make a lick a fucking difference. And I'm just like, this, Okay, it's the same joke, but in the context, it is not funny whatsoever. No, And that's that's when they're at the restaurant, right, right, And who cares about the restaurant Because I think tell a better version of I think they tell a better version of the lamb leg joke in the restaurant with the chicken a la umbrella where there where he's where the mader he is walking around with the umbrella with the chicken on fire. That I think actually kind of works better than the leg of Lamb, which ends it doesn't it doesn't. Like the only thing that's funny is I'm convinced the actor actually burned himself in that moment, because his reaction seems like a genuine one where he's like, oh, I fucking got it so hot.

I'm like, it's pretty sure he's actually touched. It's like that Leonardo DiCaprio and Django moment where it's like, I think he's actually hurt himself. The thing that I appreciate about the American one that the French one does and the French one does, I think we've mentioned a lot. The American one doesn't have Christian Clavalier playing multiple characters, right, And I actually appreciate that because, like you said, I think for me, the best version of his character is the one in the American one, because it's the most carried down and kind of focused version of it where it's just that morning. Yeah.

Yeah, he's the serve. It's just him, there's nothing else. Genrenau is more of the focus. You actually like because you have Malcolm McDowell in the movie, you do actually get the Wizard character as more of a character, which I think is also interesting. And Christina Applegate and Jean Renau have really good chemistry together.

Like surprisingly, I actually like the two of them, like they actually kind of work as like descendant and like great great great great great great granddaughter or whatever. I actually think they have really good chemistry, which helps with I mean again, so does he has really good chemistry with Beatrice in the French film. But there were some things that the remake of voids kind of either by design or just by luck, that make it a much better movie than say another French remake, the Jungle to Jungle, which is a remake of Little Indian Big City, I believe, which that movie compared to the original is. I mean, like, I like Jungle to Jungle, but it's not a good movie co bit to the original. Just visiting, I think is a good movie.

Not a great movie, but I think it's a good movie and it's better than better than some of those Francis have we ever remakes? We saw Oh that's for sure, which is again not hard in some respects, but it is hard in a lot of others. You're absolutely right that having Malcolm mcdowan here, and I was afraid it was going to be one and done, like one scene, you know, maybe maybe one day of shooting for Malcolm, that kind of thing. But when they bring him back and he travels time, I was just like, Okay, this is a good twist. I like that they're doing this and not sticking so much to the original.

I mean, I like the Wizard in the original, and I think that they handle the original perfectly. But when it comes to if we're going to need to make changes, you got Malcolm McDowell bring him into this movie more, and I just love how easily he gets along in the modern world. He figures it out so fast that basically the first time you see him, he's coming out of a store and he's got his arms just full of all the stuff that he's going to use to make this potion, and those amazing American boots that he's got American flag boots, and he's got the big fucking Wizard Beard still, but he's got a cowboy hat on. I'm just like, this is great. He looks amazing and well, I mean, Malcolm McDowell always does.

But Cowboy Wizard. Ah that I would like to see a movie just of Cowboy Wizard please. Yeah, thank you by the way that you resonated as much with the Malcolm McDowell character as I hoped you would, because he, for me, low key is probably the best part of these movies. Like he's so funny and so weirdly iconic looking like it's Merlin. It's Cowboy Merlin as played by Malcolm McDowell.

Like that's not a thing I ever knew I wanted, but now that I've gotten it, like, fucking give me that, please, Like, in whatever formatt possible, I would like to. See Cowboy Merlin meet techno Viking. I think that would be a great crossover. Played by Chris Hemsworth. Oh yeah, of course, he's got the belt.

I think he could do. Yeah, I think I think he plays characters like that professionally. Sometimes. That's one of the things that's missing from the American or UK cut of this is there's a shot of Malcolm McDowell after he explodes, you get the his torso, like you see his torso later on when he pulls himself back together, but you get this shot of his torso like sitting up and then it heels over and then I think he might wink before he dies. Maybe I'm just the can of anaconda.

But like you get one more shot, and I guess it was just too much for the UK audience to have, like this torso before the armless legless torso just keel over, which I thought it was a great shot and I really wish that they had kept that. I really and I'm a huge fan of that. The imagery of him being like a T one thousand, Yes, like a great liquid Merlin cowboy Malcolm McDowell. Now we're just adding even more qualifiers in Yeah, the I will say we didn't. We haven't really talked about it with any of the movies.

But there are some interesting special effects being used, both in the French one because we have a headless body kind of wiggling and walking around at one point, we have them kind of transforming when they drink the potion. Like those things are all I actually think they work kind of well and they're very like interesting and well done. The third movie doesn't really have anything like that, like the second one has a little bit. I but I do like those scenes where they're time traveling and how they like transform into things. I think the American one also does it really well, like it's yeah, I think the.

First the first time that they that they travel time, they just turn into big piles of shit. Well, and I know that Pavoer does for sure. Okay, and yeah, and they use that joke again in one of these I don't remember which, but yeah, I agree, especially I like in this American remake when he becomes just a head bouncing around and then Jean Renau becomes an ice stashe statue and sorry ice cristachue and explodes. Yeah, I thought that those were great. It's it's it's interesting imagery, like it's very fun unique kind of it's it's an interesting choice that you don't really see in a lot of I mean again, like ever like fantasy stuff, sometimes fantasy stuff can get weird, like and then this I think is one of them.

The scene where Matthew Ross goes back in time also fucking strange, like it sucks his face into a hole and then his whole body goes into it. Like it's so weird, but at work. I will say, also, I appreciate that they have an externalized villain in this movie, that it's not just like, oh, it's the character playing played by the same actor. Like I like that Matthew Ross is a villain. He's kind of like a Christopher MacDonald type, like a very easy to hate, you know, late nineties, early two thousands comedy villain.

Like he works really well. Like I like Matt Ross. Bridget Wilson is fun. Like Tara Reid. Surprisingly don't dislike her at all, Like I think she's great, Like.

Oh yeah, I think that she can be great on point. She can be wonderful when you see here in something like Josie and the pussy Cat. She's perfect in that role. But yeah, I think one of these days somebody's gonna realize or like the Zeke is gonna come around and it's gonna be wow. Christina Applegate is a really good actress because she is it's so funny every time I see herself.

I mean, we just talked about her in vacation. She's so good in the. Showing that fucking movie she's like the funniest part of that movie. Does I mean, does it all or whatever? The fuck?

Like that whole scene is so funny because of her. Oh god, when she bounced and I know it's probably a stunt woman, but when she bounces off of that drinking game thing and lands on the lawn and just starts the vomit everywhere, I mean, that's not a stock double the vomiting she has great when it comes to that. Mm hmm. She's no Christina Applegate is an actress who this is. This was the first thing I ever saw her in, like and and you know this is we're what like two years removed from I think the thing that when I think about her as an actress, I think it's I think it's one of my favorite It's probably my favorite thing that she's in it, which is Anchorman.

Like, she's so funny opposite Will Ferrell. It's one of those things where you could watch that movie and just focus on her character and it would be just as funny of a movie in a completely different way than it is if you focus on Will Ferrell. But her and Will Ferrell are so funny in that scene where they're just going back and forth. You always smell like a like like that back and forth, like it's so funny. She's she's really funny and able to stand up against Will Ferrell, who at the time is like the biggest fucking comedic actor and she's just standing up to him.

Like she's a really good comedic actress, like and an actress in general, but comedically very gifted and like you said, underrated. I really like that the villain is sleeping around with Bridgard Wilson, but then you find out that he's also been sleeping with Tara Reid as well, so it's like, Okay, oh, he's really getting around, so cheating on the person that he's cheating with, you know, it was really nice. And then yeah, like you said, the relationship that Jean Renaud has with Christina Applegate, that chemistry of those two on screen together really well done. And it's not such a like May December type of thing like where I'm like, oh, well, she better and not fall in love with him. I'm like, hell, it'd be okay if she fell in love with this guy.

It'd be weird because they're relatives and everything. But it's just like, Okay, he's very very charming, and she's so charming, and her fiance is just such an asshole, and I love that he just is asshole from the first moment. I mean that we basically, I mean, depending on what cut you watch, we basically meet him when he's got Bridgie Wilson Wilson crawling across the desk and talking to Christina Applegate on the phone at the. Same time Bridget Wilson Samprass by the way, Oh yes, sorry, been married to Pete Sampras this whole time. Yeah, yeah, I love Bridget Wilson.

I mean, I just I always think of her as Sonia Blade from Mortal coh of course sa or most famous role, or or I guess, as a one third of the best part of Billy Madison, the other third being fucking Darren mcgaffin, which is a weird thing. But she also is able to I mean, she's funny. They just don't get They don't give her much to do unfortunately in this movie. But that's when you're kind of like the secondary villain. I guess right.

Yeah, we didn't mention Christina Applegate. They do have her pulling double duty in this movie. She's the only one that pulls double duty because her playing the genre no love interest at the beginning of the movie, which I actually think here works better than in the French one because their chemistry kind of works better and their their relationship is a little bit more defined. And I think it also works better because she's not married, right, It feels very different when it's she already has a husband, Like there is some chemistry here that I think, actually, yes, they're relatives. But let's just ask a theoretical question.

We all agree this situation in Back to the Future where Marty McFly's mom's trying to fuck him is weird, right, Like, oh, yeah, that's because it's his direct mother, right, Yeah, this this scenario if Jean Renault and Christina Applegate got together in modern times, not that weird. Yeah, it might be so far, so far removed though, right, I'm more speaking to the immediacy of it, like he's really just a thousand years yeah right, Well, and again she. Looks exactly and that's the thing He's It's so interesting because that's where you get the grandfather paradox thing, right, because it's like, okay, well, obviously you know that you're going to succeed in going back in time, because this woman looks exactly like you're soon to be wife.

So there's no way that she can look like you're soon be wife unless you've been pregnant impregnated that person. You can't fail here. Your failure has been predetermined as not happening. Right, because she's got the same like last name and all that, right, Right, So I'm just like, because I'm like, no, it's not like she just had she marries some other guy and has a great great great great great grand daughter who looks like this. It has to be in that family because and so I'm just saying, like every single time we get into one of these movies and you realize, like, oh, his line carried on, because that's the thing in the first movies.

He's just like, Hey, I need a son because I want my line to continue. Obviously it has, so you might as well just sit there and go, Okay, Well, at some point, I'm going to go back in time because this succeeds, you know, right, she wouldn't be here unless I succeed in fulfilling my mission, right. Which I mean, Rob's the movie of its stakes. But at the same time, like that's the stakes that the movie has to navigate because if you sit and ask that too quickly, like you said, like, how could she look that way if she's not the woman that he succeeds in marrying, which means he went back in time and succeeded like or four we right it, yeah it. You know.

That's the thing that this movie gets into trouble with that the original doesn't, but it technically does because the same actress is playing Frontigone that is playing Beatrice so or Beatrice, So they are kind of getting themselves into that murky water with with that. I just think the American one, I don't know, the American one pears down so much of the French one. The French one has some like like the signet ring in the first movie, like completely unnecessary, kind of goes nowhere. I like that. The joke in the second one is that she's still driving that goddamn car that the ring blew out of the ceiling, right that that is very funny.

And then at one point the Janette is like throwing the silverwear into the car through the hole in the top of the car is funny. That's a funny carry through joke, but like the thing that the American one does. And I probably have to give the credit to John Hughes, given that all things were considered the same across the board. He kind of streamlined away some of the unnecessary stuff from the French one, like the hidden treasure in the basement of the house, like some of those things, like again, they kind of just don't go anywhere, like you could have gotten there in a different direction, and you kind of in the French one, like that's such a huge plot point, like that cast will becomes such a huge sticking point, a huge plot point that it almost feels like, at least with the first and second movie, like those movies are both just set in this castle and nowhere else.

Well, it is interesting too in the first movie that where they end up when when they get picked up by Beatrice is a very Beatrice right is the nice lady right right when they get picked up by her, that she lives in a pretty pastoral place. It's not the big city. Whereas this one you get the double dip of I'm coming out of the you know, the Middle Ages, and I'm walking into Chicago and the overwhelmingness of Chicago. I mean I can't imagine if they saw the bean, Thank goodness that wasn't there at that time, because they probably just freak out and attack it. Well, that's what That's what I always say.

Was. I was sharing cigars with a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago, and I was like, can you imagine if someone from like nineteen fifty was dropped into the world right now? They'd have a hard time understanding like iPhones, let alone like some of the other things we take for granted. But anyone from like a hundred plus us years ago would have the hardest time at dealing with any of Their heads would explode before you could even explain to them, like a car like or or you know, like motorized vehicles, or even like television or photographs, for fuck's sake, in a lot of ways, like color photography, moving pictures like and yet like these guys are just like, hey, look a car, let's stab it, like right, the im medior response is violence, which I appreciate, that's very inkeeping with the characters.

But yeah, no, like, I don't think these guys would be having as good of a time as they're having. By the third movie, they're like where are the cars at? And it's like, Okay, you guys have been desensitized to cars now, but let's not pretend two movies ago that you guys were down with motor vehicles because you attack them. So no, Well it's funny because I just you know, we were talking about Hammerhouse of Horror before we started recording. I think it's the very first episode of that.

It's a witch from like the Witch Trials in England coming forward into more modern day and the guy is freaking her out by turning the lights on and it's just like so she's like, oh gosh, and he's like, oh, turning him on and off and stuff. So when they did the exact same joke in this, I was like, where did I just see this recently? So, because yeah, it's like they are so fascinated by the smallest things. I love when they're taking the bath and they've got the huge bottle of Chanelle number five and mixing that with like toilet cleaner and all that just anything that they can do to try to make this smell better. And then you're just like, what does good smell smell like to them?

Because they've never had to that cleaner or perfume in the past. I'm sure they had some sort of perfume in the eleven hundreds. I do love him using that entire bottle Chanelle number five yes, yes, and then just four more of this yes, honestly, like the the jokes that have stuck with me from just visiting are the urinal cake that Christian Clavillier snags and he's offering to people when they leave the restaurant. That one is stuck with me. How he describes the potion tasting in the American one, it tastes of the shit of the pork.

I don't know why that makes me laugh so hard, but Christian clolle he is like delivery, is very funny. But I do find that for me, you know, and you can't tell just the things I've mentioned. Most of what works for me in the American film is the Christian clovill Yay character, which is funny because I find for me those second and third films really don't work because of his character and like you said, the over commitment to it. But in the American one, it's like the it's like the pulling back. It's the restraint that's practiced, and I think it's also maybe because then you know, this could be another part of it.

Christian Clovill, Yeah, means nothing to American audiences, right, right, he's getting paid good money. Oh yeah, fucking way, but he doesn't have the same meaning to you and me, Like it's it's the it's the Chow yun fat thing, right, like chiw un fat doesn't mean much American audience, but to Chinese audiences, like to Hong Kong cinema, he's a god. And Christian cloviellie same thing. It's like he has no cachet in the United States, so it's okay to kind of sideline him in the American one, and it kind of works in that film's favor really because again, like I see now what the second and third movie looks like if you over commit to his character and it's just interminable. Oh yeah, no, I totally agree.

And I don't know if it's that he's now speaking English. I mean he speaks in English incredibly well, so fluent as well as as I don't know, of course we know, but I wonder if that makes him slow down a little bit or tone it down a little bit, if he can't maybe yell in that or whatever. But yeah, he has taken this performance from an eleven back down to like an eight or nine, which I that gives him a little bit of room to go up when before he was just playing to the hilt all the time. Not in the first movie, but in the second and third movie. He just gets so out of control and it becomes, you know, the jacquessque show, and it's just like, no, I find Jeanrenaud to be a lot more interesting.

You are the comic relief. The comic relief shouldn't have center stage. I would go as far as even to say with something like the American version versus the French version. In the American version, like the Christian Clavalier character is so empathetic compared to the one in the French one, Like he's so empathetic and like you really feel for him. He's really like like you said, in the French one, they okay, Like that is just like got the fuck up, dude, Like it's it's a bit much, like it becomes a bit much in the terms of like the joke being like driven into the ground and then the strike trained at the core of the earth, like you've you've belabored the point at this point in the American one, they there's like, there's a little bit of that, but there ain't.

It ain't that like repeated over and over and over again. It's it's weird again. Like I do like the French version, but I I might actually say this is a weird thing. I actually think the American version is better than the French one in terms of like approachability for like, for not just American audiences, but I think a lot of the people who would be watching this movie now. I think it removes the things that the French movie doesn't do well in the first one and does worse in the second and third.

But I think in terms of making it something that doesn't have the things that would ultimately go on to ruin this franchise, being Christian Calavlier just kind of running rampant. The American one has him in the least amount. Oh yeah, well, they do a really smart thing when it comes to in the first movie, and we get that in the title of the second movie, the Corridors of Time, and it becomes this whole thing. You mentioned the hidden treasure, and really, if he hid the treasure, there shouldn't be any sort of temporal problem with him having the treasure in the modern day, but it becomes this big deal in the first movie where it's like, oh, you have to have all the treasure and you have to have and I think that's even more in the second movie, that you have to make sure you get every single bit this treasure.

It's very uh versus the black Pearl. Right pearl. Yeah, it's very It's very Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean. Do you like French vises? You're in one.

That's right, that's right. So, and then it's also, well, you have to have Jacas come back with you, and Jacas is like listen no, And it feels much more heartfelt in this where it's like listen no, I have status here, like there is no more feudal surf kind of shit that's going on with me. I have this now and I've got this beautiful girlfriend, like let me stay here. And in the first movie they're just like, yeah, know what, fuck you know you're gonna go back with me. And that's what sets off everything, which is the cousin or the descendants.

Sorry, it looks so much like Jakas that he gussies him up and he goes back in time, which ruins the whole quarters of time balance and YadA, YadA, YadA. And with the American remake, it doesn't matter. He doesn't have to go back. There is no like there's a little bit of treasure, but he stole it in the past brought it to the future. Apparently that's not a problem either.

That's time he's had on him the whole time. He's not going to ruin the courridors of time by him spending this treasure and by him going off with Tara Reid at the end of the movie. It's so much easier that way, and I think that it's nice. I imagine they didn't think we're going to get a sequel, so they just trimmed all those loose ends so they don't have that automated Oh you have to have a sequel to this thing, we better set it up a mile away. I've seen movies without a sequel.

Well, the first one didn't really like it kind of did just end. You have just hard back in time. Yeah, but that's punishment at the end of that first movie, just like with Matt Ross's character at the end of just visiting. That's just punishment for his character. Like that's just you know, the way the movie's metering out the punishment to his character.

It becomes so much more when you expound upon it in that second film. And then it's like, okay, so what were the stakes then, like so you fucked everything up by doing this? Okay, well, and then it's they give you know, I was talking about this whole idea of in you know, the first movie where he's like, listen, I've got this agency. The second, the remake, they really hit that with like you know, hey, stand up for yourself and the way that Tara Reid is talking with him and just like you really need to set the record straight and let him know that you're no longer the servant and then he kind of cowers a one point. She's disappointed him.

It's like an actual plot, if you can believe that. And then you come to the third movie, uh, you know obviously the the least one, and it's all about class relationships and what's going on with the French Revolution, and it's like this is your chance, Shakas like do it, like talk talk about like how you want to be your own man, and that you had that in the previous film. You know, it's like where was that? Where is that stuff that was happening? Then you've now got this beautiful stage of trying to level the playing field between the haves and the have nots, and you don't really use that opportunity whatsoever.

Somehow the American film does a better job. Yes, which is weird, Yeah it is. I guess it's that whole. You know, anybody can grow up to be precedent, even if you have thirty four felony accounts. That's right, you know what they say, it's a level playing it really is.

Oh, of course it's America, right anybody. Yeah, anybody can can be a millionaire sure, sure, or a billionaire or trillionaire. Now so, I mean if you're if you're a French surf who stole some jewels and pawted a pawn shop, you can live off that for a while. You know what, you could have your father own an Emerald mind and see all the proceeds to you. That would be pretty good.

Or speaking of nepotism, your father could just be Emerald. Yeah, there you go, Emeral Lagasi. Okay, it's true. His son has a two Michelin Star restaurant named Emeralds in New Orleans, which his father opened and got Michelin stars for it. Now he just took over.

Oh really, Okay, that's hot, but I mean, you know, you. Got to maintain those Michelin stars. Baby, I went and had a Michelin Star meal last year. That was a three Michelin Star restaurant. It is now a two Michelin star restaurant.

I no kidding, I'm dead serious. Are you watching Culinary Class Wars on? Haven't? I want to? Though?

It is amazing, and you as an Iron Chef fan, I would just watch it in the English dub and just some of those voices sound like some of the old voices from Iron Chef. Oh my god, you've you make my heart flutter when you talk about Iron Chef. I've got I forget how much of the stuff I watched growing up was foreign language or foreign language adjacent, because I kid you, not my family, and I still quote just visiting now as adults twenty four years on, twenty five years on, and it is a remake of a foreign language film like that I didn't see for twenty four years. Like I think that, but I think that actually speaks to the quality of just visiting as a movie that like I never thought to myself, let me go watch those.

No, it doesn't have that touch of strangeness that sometimes you get with American remakes of foreign films. I mean that was we saw that forward. Yeah, oh yeah, this really feels and again it's probably hats off to John Hughes, just really americanified this whole thing. And yeah, it does not have that. Oh gosh, I wonder what the original is like, Like every time True Lies comes up on TV and just like I got to go back and watch the original.

I imagine the original was so much better than this, because this just doesn't feel right. It doesn't And I don't know if it's a James Cameron, I don't know if it's the anti air racism that's going on, but something just doesn't feel true to me. And sometimes I think it's that whole idea of the uh, the Bill Paxton character, because he feels like a French character who escaped into an American movie. Yeah. Well, and I was going to say like that that for me, is the weirdness in True Lies is the you know, slowly like all of that, like all of the Bill Paxton, all the stripping in the room, like all of that feels very very and none of this movie had like this movie is so unFrench that you know, like like I've been mentioning, like I watched the first three movies with a friend of mine and by the end of it, I was like, Okay, we will watch the last one together after all of these, and it will redeem these last two, because I did not expect the last two to be bad, but I was like, at the end of it, I was also like, it's also, I think, probably in a lot of ways, the most approachable, accessible, but also the most odd because these kinds of things, like you said, don't work rarely do they work with the same director.

So this movie's in like a weird, like small list of things where it's like it's a remake of the film, directed by the original director, written by the original writers, plus one of the most well known American comedy writers of the eighties and nineties. Plus on top of everything else, it's two of the original actors. Ostensibly, the two main actors are also in it, and they're not sequelized versions of themselves. This is a reboot or remake completely, like I would have rather seen a sequel to the American film than the French one, if you're asking me what I'd rather see, given that the where they leave the American one, there is no imminently obvious sequel like with the and with the French one there really wasn't either.

But when they did that back to the future stuff with the second one, it's just like, oh, okay, now we know what the third one is going to be if they ever make it, and if they ever make a fourth one, which God willingly they will, you know, it'll be them in Nazi times, which okay, yeah. I'm hoping maybe they start there and quickly like do a voice over, you know, maybe get Alicia Witt or no, Virginia Madsen to come in and say, you know, in the two standard years that followed, they defeated all the Nazis and retook Alsance Lorraine. You know something. Wh wouldn't they get the narrator from the American version? Oh yes, mister.

Grammar there. That's also a nice thing is there's no narrator in the French version either, especially to know Kelsey Grammar. Thank you, Kelsey Grammer. Just doing what I can only imagine is like his best side show Bob as William Shakespeare. Yes, Kelsey Grammer, like d bart d like oh my god, dude, Like I always every time I watch just visiting, I always forget that Kelsey Grammar is just like front and center getting of the movie and it just it might Okay, it is the worst part of the American without a doubt.

It makes it is. But you know what, like I think it's the worst part, but it totally works because it it gets you where you need to be at the beginning of the movie. And then it drops out and doesn't come back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was really glad that it doesn't come back, like its. Deadly do writing of it all where it's like now to see what tebaw was doing, like which I mean look like I mean George of the Jungle Dudley do write very funny movies.

I just don't think that have worked here. But you know again, like if you have Kelsey Grammar as the narrator of your movie, it might have there might have been some restraint being practiced to not have him be more present in the movie. Because two thousand and one, Kelsey Grammar popular popular, popular guy, Like there's a reason he's narrating this movie because Fraser is very popular. And David Hyde Pierce had like a whole side business of narrating things for quite. A while and things together right now as well.

Now I think Kelsey Grammar is just going to be you know, talking about true social or some some sort of right wing cause if he is going to do any voiceovers these days. Or spoiling MCU movies or falling off of stages. So yeah, take their pick, right whatever mister the Big kg's up to. It is weird that they added narration, but I think again, like in terms of this being high concept, it helps ease you into the story. It makes it feel kind of like a like a like a fairy tale, like like story book adjacent, which I mean again, like the tone of the American one is so flights of fancy and not as kind of like serious, Like the violence isn't there.

Women aren't being murd hurt, men aren't being caffecated, which I don't have any issue with. I actually prefer a little bit of like edge to my comedies. But the American one is so kind of like fairy taily that I think that it actually like the tone totally works with what they're getting at with the American one. Yeah. I mean, the one real act of violence that I can think of as a guy getting an axe in his chest.

But then they use a willhelm, and they use a premature wilhelm. He screams before he gets hit by that axe. So that's right, that was weird. I want to talk about the end of this movie and all of the different endings because they have to wrap up everything and there's a little bit extra on the French one. It's like Return of the King in a way.

Really Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, you bow for no man so or no one, I should. Say, Christian Flablier. Everyone is bowing to him. Yeah, right, short, right, He's a bit diminutive, one might say.

So the endings are similar, they're in a different order. The French one ends in so it starts in medieval times. When they go back, you've got Malcolm McDowell still wearing his cowboy hat. You've got Genrena kissing everyone back awake. They're like statues, and he kisses Christina Applegate and then everyone.

He doesn't have to kiss everyone. That would be kind of weird, but everyone in the entire world he has to kiss them awake. That's the rest of his life, is kissing awake these people. Yes, but no, he kisses her. Everyone comes back, including the King, who looks like the King from Burger King very much to me for real.

By the way, thank you for fucking mentioning that. That is like the like the last time I watched this movie is like, doesn't that character look like Burger King? Is like wait, what the fuck? Is like no, like like literally like really, like it's not an accident. I've like, I haven't done interviews for episodes in a very long time, but if I could interview the production designer of this movie, like, so, I'm just us a curious yeah, as a curious mind.

This guy's a redhead and he looks. Like the and there's like the Sheriff of Nottingham type character. We never really get a good backstory for this guy. But Genre's like, oh, go ahead, try this wine, and the King is like, yeah, you should try that wine. And he basically backs himself out of a window.

Genredau does not kill anyone. He just backs him out of a window and he falls out, and then we. Still let Sean Connery ask gooflag, Oh he did. That's essentially the gag. And then we've got Matt Ross as the fiance has Big Bear drinking his drink, his protein thing, and I'm glad that she mentions that very early on that they taste disgusting, and he's the only one that drinks this, so he slams this stuff and then just happens to lift up the the Latin spell that's there just laying on the counter.

Thank you, Malcolm MacDowell for leaving that. Yeah, he goes back in time in a really grotesque way with that mouth opening like a train tunnel. That was so strange. And then cut to Tara Reid and Jaccas going across the country and yeah, just having a good old time. But then you then and I know this is a different order in the US one, but then you have the whole thing of Christina Applegate in the present visiting the castle that she owns and meeting that very handsome lawyer dude.

I mean, he's cute. I don't know if he's handsome, But then you go back to the medieval times and he gives her this little hair clip that he clips onto it's a gift from her great great great great granddaughter, from Christina Applegate to Christina Applegate with love, and we pull out from there. But then you get the credits, and the credits go over a whole scene of it, a little bit longer than the one in the US, and this is again it's under the credits, and it's Matt Ross being dumped back in time. And at first he's Matt Ross, but then at first he's the character, but then he is Matt Ross. He like breaks through the fourth wall.

I don't think that's in the US version. No, it is not. Yeah, he's like screaming and yelling, and unfortunately, this is the one thing I couldn't get in English. So because I'm listening to the American version and watching the French version, so he's just yelling in French. I have no idea why he's yelling.

And it's so strange because the credits start to fast forward. He gets in a car, he drives away, and it's just like this goes on for a long damn time before they finally go into outtakes from the movie. And again I don't think are those in the American version. No, I was gonna say, I am pretty sure that that is a direct reference to U something that I've already brought up. I believe that that might be a reference to my Python and the Holy Grail.

Okay, all right, yeah, yeah, that does make sense, and driving off, yeah, and just breaking the fourth wall for no reason, like yeah, yeah, yeah, and then yeah, like the outtake stuff, which are actually pretty funny. Again, if I could hear them in English, who would probably be a little bit funnier, because if somebody blows their line, I'm not really gonna know it, right, It might be outtakes, It might just be small clips from the very from the movie itself. But at the very very end, you get Christina Applegate saying like, oh, you mean for the our words, and she goes, sorry, I had to say that. And at the time, in two thousand and one or two thousand and three, whenever this came out, it would have been funny.

Two thousand and one, sorry, it would have been funny. But you know, by today's twenty twenty six standards, you can't say that word anymore. So, but yeah, that was a good way to end it. It's like, okay, yeah, you give her the last line of the whole thing. Well, and you know again, like I think we both would agree, Christina Applegate very funny in this movie.

Oh god, yes, yeah. Did you see when this film came out on VHS and DVD No. Nine eleven, two thousand and one, It sure did. Oh jees, Mike White, ladies and gentlemen would have gotten that final Jeopardy question right and I didn't even have to give you a hint. Wow.

Wow, Where were you when the world stopped turning? Mike buying Just Visiting on DVD? Yeah, of course that's what Alan Jackson was not expecting my answer to be. I was in line at Tower Records waiting to pick a lear special edition version of Just Visiting on DVD. You're, mister Jackson.

As a fan of you and your music, I just wanted to share my story of where I was that faithful day. I was buying my favorite French comedy remade in English language on DVD and he goes, you know what soun me too, me too, That's where I was when the world's to upturn it Good lord, what a wild thing to think about that this was the last thing to come out on one of the last things that come out on DVD in a pre nine to eleven world. Technically one might even say on that day. I don't know what else came out on that day, but this is part of a very small list of things that are the last things that come out on DVD before the world starting. World heard, Yeah, the world started falling apart.

Oh my god, good Lord. I'm so glad we watched this movie, Mike. There are some comedies from my upbringing that I have always wondered how they would play in a modern day setting. Just Visiting is not a film I ever thought I would cover, and it is a film that I am glad I have covered with you because I appreciate that you ever enjoyed it. Because I know that comedies can kind of be hard, like I.

You know, if I were to pick a movie for you and I to do, comedies wouldn't be at the top of that list unless it's something where I like, I know I haven't in with, Like I have an idea for something else that I think we should talk about that would be fun. That's another like comedy, but it's a thing where it's like I know you like the thing or the person already, because like comedies are just so hard. Like you know, we've talked about them a lot, and I think we've gotten better at doing it, especially having done like Airplane and top or not top gun but top secret top secret, and then all of the naked gun stuff with Mark Begley, and then I mean, really, I feel like the thing that kind of put our ability to talk comedies to the test was our Chevy Chase podcast, which we're coming to the very quick end of finally.

But comedies are not something that up until recently I really talked about on the Culture Cast because most of the time it's just, hey, remember this funny joke, which ain't analysis, ain't anything other than just regourging. And again, when a lot of the comedies tend to not be good, it's hard to find anything else to enjoy with them if they're not eve at least making you laugh, which is like the lowest of low bars to cross in my opinion, Right. Yeah, yeah, And like you said, there's nothing worse than a bad comedy really really sucks. So I'm just really glad that I got to see both just visiting and the visitors. I think the visitors really need to be checked out by more people if they haven't obviously, like I said before, one of the top grossing films in France, or you might have said that, right, And I can see why.

I can see why this was just eaten up by public. And yeah, I'm actually going to go back now and check out some of these other things that Clavier and Fire made together. There's one right before this with Jean Renau as well, called Operation Corned Beef. I think it is, so I think I'm definitely gonna put that at the top of my watch list. And that's like of the four films that come up with Puare's IMDb, it's the visitors just visiting the visitors.

Two Quarridors in time three doesn't make it. Operation corn Beef does well. I was looking at two. Another interesting connection to two. Two sold eight more than eight million tickets in France and it was the second highest grossing film in nineteen ninety eight behind Take a Guess, a film you and I have talked about that came out in nineteen ninety eight as well.

Le Diner Ducontes. Oh, yes, the classic. Yes, I would say the best thing of all the things we watched. Really like, I think you're right which is hilarious because it was Pierre Richard than that. No, no, no, that's the one that he was the only one that doesn't have it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, And I've been since we talked about those movies, I have seen more of those Vepper films and I've actually watched some more of those Pierre Richard films as well. So yeah, it's it's not going away, the sickness of watching French comedies, It's still going to be there. I'd like you. I'm afraid of diving into other brands of comedy other countries. I've heard that the Italian ones are very tough to get into, so these French ones seem to be, you know, kind of by my level, even if I don't know everything about French history.

Well, Mike White, March or May this year could be French comedies once again. We could do a little Asterix and Obelix, do a little Christian Clavalier. He seems like the less problematic Gerard de Pardue. I mean, I mean Christian Clavalier. Big Schnaz as well as a big Schnaz have her myself from one Big Schnaz over to another.

Gerard Diparty is the problematic big schnaz Haver. Christian Klavalier doesn't seem to be as problematic or is I think the word on the internet is rapie, yeah allegedly. Yeah. Well I don't know about the rapee with Depardue, but the pinging on the airplane that was that seems. A little much.

Oh, Girard Depardu has been like arrested for like sexual assault stuff recently. Right right, wonderful? Well, you know what they say, never meet your heroes and if you do, run. I did love the bit on We Hate Movies years ago where it was imagine people who have moved to Russia or basically cast themselves out. So it was Steven Sagal, Gerard Depardieu, and Edward Snowden all sharing an apartment.

And yes, to clarify, Gerard Depardue in May of twenty twenty five was convicted of sexual assault against two women. So they're very rape yeah, very right, so great, So yeah, maybe some more Christian Clavalier films. I don't know. I mean, Mike White March, we haven't even talked about it, but this was this was something that we were talking about doing last year and it just kind of fell off the wagon. And so you know, this year, it's an interesting way to start the year talking about French comedies.

But it does feel like a little bit of a holdover from last year, given that to Mike White, the Mike White Month was French comedies replete with them. So yeah, oh, thank you for joining me. This was a fun episode. I'm glad we glad we watched it. I'm glad you enjoyed them.

I'm kind of disappointed that the second and third ones weren't great, but their sequels to comedies, Jesus we talked about. I talked about how good Christine Applegay was an anchorman. Has anyone seen Anchorman too? Don't Ah could nak it through the first one? Yeah, mean my weaknesses, I get it, I understand that, But let me put it this way.

A sequel to a comedy that comes out five to ten or more than that years later, boy, ain't the success that you've set yourself up for is not there? And so yeah, when you have a comedy coming out eighteen years after the second film, it would be ten years now if they made another one. It's been ten years since they made the last. Just visiting him that's that's wild to me. Ain't getting any younger either.

Is Christian Claville. He's seventy seven, and I think Renault is like seventy three. Maybe like they're both You know, this isn't Indiana Jones. They could do it one more time they age them. You gotta answer the story of where the fuck what happened?

You know? Gen Renau. By the way, Jean Renau is seventy seven as well. So okay, uh question before we end this, do you know what nationality Jean Renaud's parents were? Actually, no, I don't you know.

What Gean Renau's real name is. I just had my mind blown. What's that? Jean Renaud's name is Juan Mareno here Jimenez Wrence. We're Spanish because he's fucking Spanish, because he's not h ethnically French.

I guess. So okay, So now that I look at pictures of him, he does just look like an old Hispanic man. That's very funny. Wow, Gen Renau otherwise known as Jean or juanam Reno. Fun that's fun.

I didn't know that. Good for him. Interesting. Yeah, I think he's going to be going time traveling again in his next movie. I'm looking at his AMDB and there's a Netflix trailer and uh, looks like medieval Times.

Maybe they get sucked into a game a la Jumanji. Oh, that'd be fun. I was gonna say, like, I believe Jean Renau made a film with a penguin that looked rather charming called Mike. Oh that really was. That was very charming.

I got to interview him and the director at the same time. I forgot I interviewed him before. Yeah we're in the waning moments of this episode. Oh by the way, yeah, yeah, because I got to talk to him about that penguin film. That's my penguin friend.

Jean Renaul is super nice. I hope he was. He was really nice. Yeah, And it was so tough to just stay on target with him because he's been in so many things I Love. And Boy and out and hey, now's now another thing.

I mean, like, like I said this, this would have been the thing for me. It would have been this, or hilariously The Da Vinci Code, which he's actually pretty good at. He's really out that, yeah. Or he's also really funny in The Pink Panther with Steve Martin like I think Jean Renau has some like his comedy chops are pretty well rounded as an actor, I feel. Oh absolutely, but you know, and he's been in he's been in a lot of shit, but he's always good in it.

He's kind of like a little bit of a Gene Hackman in that way, like he was in that awful roller Ball remake. You know. So yeah, it's like all right, great, but. Yeah stuff like Ronan or I mentioned, uh, mission impossible, you know, like, yeah, he's he's been great and so many things, and whenever he shows up, he just adds a lot to whatever he's doing. I think that's why he works so well.

When it comes to the La fam Nikita, he's the best part of the movie. He shows up five minutes before the end. He's the best part of the movie. And he basically is the character that Harvey Kaiitel plays in both Point and Overturn, the direct remake of Nikita, but also mister pulp fiction. Right, he's the guy that comes in to clean up the situation.

It's one of those like oh, mister Wolf's on it, like you know, hey, I'm good, you know, as Joel says, so like he he means business man, the Leon the or was it Leon the Cleaner? Vincent the Cleaner is just such a great character. Yeah, you're You're totally right, like genre no, just he's done. His range is very wide, and I think there are a lot of people in the States who would know him for like you said, just action stuff, Florida action adjacent stuff. But then there are the just visitings or the Black Panther or if you're me, like one of the early things I saw after this, so it would have been Godzilla than this.

And then the other thing I saw was he was in on Amusha three Demon Siege, which is a video game about samurais where the third game takes place somehow, and he's a Frenchman in there, and like it's you get to play a genre no, and in game killing demon like Japanese demons. It wow in like two thousand and four, like it's you know, this is long before people were really integrating actors in a big way into video games. But I remember Jean Renau was like front and center, like his likeness and his voice like nice yeah, like again like it's weird, Jean Renau is just an actor who, like I don't know if he does or doesn't get his due, but I don't think enough Americans. He reminds me of Chalian fat in a lot of ways, Like he's massive where he's from, but here it's like who I mean?

Unfortunately, I think most people would know him from the professional And you mentioned the word rape before. I mean that movie just weird. Movie gives me bad vibes. There's great things about it, like I use that gift of Gary Oldman saying everyone quite a few times a day. But yeah, I really like him showing up in things.

But I didn't like that movie. I've got one that's gonna go on my to watch list, which is called The Jaguar, where he stars and it's written in directed by Francis Feber, and it's not a remake of Weber's own film. Hey, I'd watch it. I'm I'm strangely French film, Like is it's interesting we watched that, didn't We watch that French film a couple of years ago? You and I that one where it was like the actor like he was like going and like playing all these different roles and he was getting back here.

Oh yeah, motors, Yeah, the motors. Another French film, Like, French film's very interesting, Like you know, I'm I'm not. I'm not opposed to watching international film. I know a lot of people are, because you know, you actually have to pay attention and watch the movie and you can't just do something else and listen, which again I could. Most people don't even listen, so I get it.

But some titled movies you have to sit and read and like, I get it. Like for some people that might be asking too much. But if you're gonna sit and enjoy film like and push yourself as a film watcher, like, you should be watching international film. And Jean Renau is like one of the bigger names in French film, like and you can do worse than picking up his filmography and running with it. Oh yeah, So, Mike, when you and I aren't talking about French film or possibly talking about French film, where can people find you and the things that you work on?

You can hear me talk about French film and a whole lot more over at the Projection Booth, which is available at Projection Booth podcast dot com, or everything that I do with Chris and without over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Except for the one thing that we do with Richard HadAM, which is our Patreon exclusive over at the ten dollars and above level. That's at patreon dot com slash Projection Booth and patreon dot com slash Culturecast. And that's our show about James Bond called Ranking on Bond. So by the time you hear this, it might be ova we're there with the uh Daniel Craig era.

So depending on how quickly this one comes out. And I know I've ummed and udded through quite a bit of it, so I apologize for that, Chris, But yeah, so come and check that out. How about you, Chris. You can find me over Weirdingwaymedia dot com as well, where this show and all the other shows that I work on can be found. We're rolling out some new stuff this year.

We're picking up some things that have been sitting around for a while that nobody's done anything with read me and yeah, it's there's a lot going on. I'm really excited about the new year over Weirdingway Media and some new opportunities, some new ideas, and that's all rolling right now. That's all in the works now, that's all happening right now. So If that is something that you're interested in, head on over to weirdingwaymedia dot com and check that out. Like Mike said, Patreon is a good way to support us financially, but like rate and review the show wherever you get it, please let that be on iTunes because iTunes seems to be the way that people find us. iTunes seems to be the way that we engage.

We're also on YouTube and Spotify. Those are places you can can engage with us as well, but iTunes is preferred if you're going to ask. So Mike, thank you so much for joining me. This was fun. I'm glad we talked about four movies in one episode.

That's the thing we haven't done in a while. But yeah, yeah, but I enjoy it. I mean, like we now we never have to talk about these again. That's done. You know, check markin a long list of boxes that neither one of us even knew we had.

Yeah, and as as always, we'll catch up on the next episode. By the bisidsstsssssssc The brings to the Boost the Boss for the books for Bo