Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: two cult characters from French comedy are crossing the Atlantic!
Everyone knows Les Visiteurs, a cult comedy led by Christian Clavier and Jean Reno. A monument of French laughter with cult replicas in spades, which made nearly 14 million spectators sway in theaters. Everyone also knows the sequel, The Corridors of Time, also praised by the public with more than 8 million entries.
But have you already heard of the film which takes Jacquouille la Fripouille and the Count of Montmirail to the United States? A film not at all well rated by AlloCiné spectators which could be given a second chance this evening on TFX!
Released in theaters in 2001, the feature film Visitors in America, still supported by Clavier and Reno, is the US adaptation of Visitors. By immigrating to the United States, the characters changed their surnames, Jacquouille becoming André le Pâté and Count Godefroy de Montmirail now being baptized Count Thibault de Malfete.
If Jean-Marie Poiré, the director of the first two films, is back behind the camera for this American version, we will notice the presence in the screenplay of Chris Columbus, to whom we owe Maman, j’ai missed l’avion, Madame Doubtfire and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Also note the presence in the casting of Malcolm McDowell, the hero of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and the young Tara Reid, revealed by the American Pie saga.
For Visitors to America, Christian Clavier had to seriously learn English. “I relied on the advice of a coach, Ms. Klier, a remarkable woman who had already taken care of Juliette Binoche with the success that we know”declares the interpreter of Jacquiouille. “Together, we worked a lot. But when I found myself on the first day having to start in the middle of a team of two hundred people who didn’t know me in the slightest, not having seen Les Visiteurs and even less The Corridors of Time, the expression felt was as exciting as it was terrifying. Extraordinary.”
“I had stage fright dictated by a desire to convince”continues the actor. “I found myself in an insecurity that I had forgotten, confronted with a regenerating fear. I had to learn to know the other, to tame them. I had the impression of starting again, like at the beginning of The Splendid.”
Tonight on TFX at 10:55 p.m.
False Connection: the blunders and errors of the “Visitors”