Just Visiting

 

Our rating: 4 out of 5

Rated: PG13

reviewed by Charity Bishop
 

Generally films of this nature are stupid enough to make fans of slapstick comedies roll on the floor in laughter, but eyeball rollers to check their watch every thirty seconds against the remaining running time. I'm a girl who likes dry comedy, not in your face antics. But somehow, I managed to enjoy Just Visiting even though it is at times juvenile and predictable. A marriage between two 12th century knights (or rather, ONE 12th century knight and his 12th century peasant) and modern-day Chicago is bound to be a blast.

The film opens in the hovel of a witch who has just been consulted by an evil knight to slay Count Thibault, the French knight who is to be wed to Princess Rosalind and inherit all the kingdom. She must determine a way for his death to look accidental so the evil knight might assume Thibault's place in marriage. So she brews up a nice little potion which will make the princess go mad upon seeing her lover and slay him. Only the potion backfires... Thibault consumes it instead, and murders his bride-to-be. He, along with his peasant-servant Andre, are thrown into prison to be executed. In desperation, Andre sends word to the nearest wizard for assistance. This Merlin-wannabe says he can fix a spell which will send them back in time to prevent the tragedy. But apparently all the magic-casters in this century don't know a bird's egg from a silver coin. Instead of sending them back into the past, he sends them into the future! 

They wake up in the year 2000 in a Chicago museum exhibit, armor, sausage, and swords intact. Convinced this modern city of horseless carriages and elevators is the "Underworld," the pair set out to find a proper wizard. Enter Julia Malfete, Thibault's descendent... and a dead ringer for Princess Rosalind. Having mistaken Thibault for a long-lost cousin, she welcomes them into the house, much to the distress of her cheating boyfriend Hunter. He's out to pull a fast one. But can our noble knight and his lowly servant save this lovely damsel in distress before their 12th century wizard shows up to sweep them back to their own time? For the most part the humor in this film is that of modern conveniences. To a medieval knight, everyday commodities such as electricity, elevators, running water, and toothpaste are a marvel. How would you react, seeing an automobile for the first time? I found myself laughing throughout the film, with only rare moments of seriousness or disgust.

They've managed to incorporate some historical facts, such as the belief that bathing too often would cause a man to become ill and die (thus the knights' obvious stench). Witnessing a wizard strolling around the court in a pair of red and white cowboy boots can create a smile on even the most stern observer. For a movie of this nature, concerns are mild but sometimes insulting. Crude humor does pop in and out of the dialogue, as well as some language (one abuse of Jesus' name, possibly another muffled, one GD, and three of sh*t along with minor abuse of deity and mild profanity). Some of these running gags involve bathing in toilets and Andre mistaking a urinal sanitizer for breath mints. He also eats dog food, dines off the floor, farts loudly in one of Chicago's most elite restaurants, and makes several crude sexual remarks to a young woman after picking up the phone. (It's also implies he vomits in Hunter's briefcase after being carsick.)

Hunter is secretly seeing his secretary Amber, a slender, sexy blonde, while carrying on a relationship with Julia. Once during a phone conversation Amber rolls around on his marble-topped desk to give him a bird's eye view of her cleavage. Julia and Hunter sleep in the same bed, and live in the same house without the benefits of marriage. An old woman flips Hunter the bird while he's driving slowly down the freeway. Some mild violence crops up, mostly played for laughs. There is an element of magic, but nothing you can't handle if you're accustomed to watching all the fish out of water stories revolving around King Arthur's court. The witch is properly hideous; the hallucinations suffered by Thibault are grotesque -- people's faces transform into hideous manifestations of talking fruit. A wizard blows himself up, and his body parts (he's in four separate pieces) become stone until he's able to pull himself back together. (Yes, that is a pun! :) A griffin unfurls himself from a boiling caldron and inflicts serious hair frizzing on the evil knight. It's not quite as good as The Princess Bride, but nothing ever will be.