General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Just Visiting

Just Visiting (French release title: Les Visiteurs en Amérique) is a 2001 comedy-fantasy film directed by Jean-Marie Poiré, an English-language remake of the 1993 French hit Les Visiteurs, in which a 12th-century French nobleman and his servant are accidentally transported to modern-day Chicago by a wizard's flawed time-travel potion.¹ Jean Reno and Christian Clavier reprise their roles from the original film, joined by Christina Applegate, Matt Ross, Tara Reid, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, and Malcolm McDowell.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	April 6, 2001 (United States); April 11, 2001 (France)²^•³
Director and writers	Jean-Marie Poiré; screenplay by Christian Clavier, Jean-Marie Poiré, and John Hughes⁴
Source	Remake of Les Visiteurs (1993), written by Poiré and Clavier⁴
Cast	Jean Reno (Thibault), Christian Clavier (André), Christina Applegate (Rosalind/Julia), Matt Ross (Hunter), Tara Reid (Angelique), Bridgette Wilson-Sampras (Amber), Malcolm McDowell (the wizard)⁴
Production	Gaumont and Hollywood Pictures; distributed by Buena Vista Pictures⁴
Runtime and rating	88 minutes (AFI, MPAA PG-13); French sources list 94–95 minutes⁴^•⁵
Reception	33% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (78 reviews), 52% audience score; Metascore 38; gross of $4.8 million in the United States¹^•⁶

Spoilers

Plot

During the Hundred Years' War, the French duke Thibault de Malfète travels to England to marry Rosalind, daughter of the king of Great Britain. Earl de Warrick, who opposes the marriage, has a witch prepare a potion for the duke; Thibault drinks it unknowingly, suffers hallucinations, and kills his fiancée, a crime that carries a death sentence.³ His loyal servant André le Pâté saves him with the help of an English wizard, who brews a potion meant to send the two men back in time to prevent Rosalind's death. The wizard omits a crucial ingredient, and the pair are instead flung through the corridors of time.³

They arrive in the year 2000 in Chicago, waking in a chamber of their own castle that has been reconstructed stone by stone in a large museum for an exhibition on the Middle Ages.³ The exhibition was organized by the curator Julia Malfète, a descendant of Thibault and Rosaline who holds the key to their return.³ Out of their element, the knight and his servant wreak havoc coping with modern life while Thibault must also protect Julia from her scheming fiancé, Hunter, who hopes to get his hands on the family estate.⁵^•⁷

Production

Co-writer and director Jean-Marie Poiré and co-writer and co-star Christian Clavier teamed up with John Hughes, the writer-director associated with Home Alone, to remake their 1993 French hit.⁸ The film was produced by Patrice Ledoux and Ricardo Mestres, shot by cinematographer Ueli Steiger, edited by Michael A. Stevenson, and scored by John Powell; costumes were designed by Penny Rose.⁴^•⁹ Location filming, in CinemaScope, was done in Chicago and England.¹⁰

Several sources credit the direction to "Jean-Marie Gaubert"; the director's own website identifies Jean-Marie Gaubert as Jean-Marie Poiré.⁴^•⁹ The film was Clavier's first English-language role; the actor, often compared to Peter Sellers, was one of France's most popular stars.¹¹

Release and reception

The film opened in the United States on April 6, 2001, and in France on April 11, 2001.²^•³ It grossed $4.8 million in the United States.¹ In France it recorded 1,219,488 admissions by the end of its first theatrical run, and Le Monde reported that it did not place among the top ten at the French box office.⁹^•¹²

Critical response was mostly unfavorable. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 33% Tomatometer from 78 reviews, with a critics' consensus calling it a middling, forgettable effort that is not as good as the original; the audience score was 52%.¹ Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 38, based on 25 critic reviews, classified as generally unfavorable.⁶ Reviews diverged on the comparison with the source film. Roger Ebert, the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times and winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, gave it 3 stars and called it one of the rare American remakes of a French film that preserves the flavor of the original and even improves on it, suggesting the fish-out-of-water premise plays better with French and American accents than with subtitles.¹³ Dave Kehr of The New York Times wrote that the humor had been sanitized compared with the darker, more grotesque comedy of the French original.⁶ The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's critic judged it not nearly as funny as the original, noting that Disney had imported the two male stars and the director of the original, something it had not done before in its history of reworking French hits.¹⁴ French commentary was similarly cool: Télé Star described the remake as sanitized and stripped of several comic devices that gave the original its flavor, including Clavier's double role and the colorful supporting characters.¹⁵

Relationship to Les Visiteurs

The source film, Les Visiteurs (1993), written by Poiré and Clavier and starring Reno and Clavier, was the top-grossing comedy in French history, though it did only moderate business in the United States.¹³ Just Visiting keeps the central premise and the two leads but moves the destination of the time travelers from France to Chicago and shifts the language to English.¹ The film was released on video in 2001¹⁰ and later on Blu-ray in a special edition from Kino Lorber.⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2000 to 2002 › Comedies of 2001

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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