What’s this? A French film? Actually this is one of my favorite 90s French films, about a knight who goes forward in time, entirely by accident. This will be one of the higher rated films I have shown, netting a solid 7.0 on IMDb. So what is it about? Today, I turn to the comments from Bored Dragon on IMDb for an explanation:
The medieval nobleman (Jean Reno), under the influence of the evil witch, kills the future father in law. In order to save the wedding, he must return to the past and correct the error. But one evil never goes alone, so the court wizard makes a mistake too and sends him to our time.
The clash of cultures, divided by almost a millennium, is a perfect stage for comedy, and this movie uses it quite well. Jean Reno and Christian Clavier are excellent in leading roles, and the rest of the cast do not fall far behind. Ridiculous situations follow one another without respite and the fun is guaranteed.
This film proved so popular it had two sequels and then got remade in English, with the original knight and squire (The remake, Just Visiting isn’t bad). Tonight’s film and all the others after it star the ever capable Jean Reno as the knight, and he is great. Trivia! Jean Reno’s big claim to fame is that he turned down playing Agent Smith in The Matrix in order to be in the American made Godzilla (1998). That decision must sting to this day (Thanks IMDb).
So get ready for some Frenchy goodness, whip on those glasses to view subtitles and get ready for the Thursday night movie! We have broad comedy, toilet humor, and even some comedic class struggle (this is French) in tonight’s film!
So watch! Or don’t! Everything is voluntary! Next week we will start a series of audience appreciation, and I will start to post all of your fine suggestions.
Bonus Content
Fake newsreel from Paul Terry of Terry Toons, circa 1953. As I watched this I realized how little had actually changed. Enjoy that politician vignette. All the Terry Toons have been made public on YouTube now.
Ouch, my head hurts. Maybe I’ll try to watch this just by listening.
Crap, the one time a movie isn’t overdubbed.
Sorry
Here, I found the Americanized version on Amazon Prime. All English.
http://amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.50c19710-4f05-414c-9a69-e9f1a5d44cd9?autoplay=1
No need to apologize. I usually prefer subs. It’s just that I’ve had a headache all day. Not your fault.
I’ll be getting a CPAP machine in a few weeks, maybe that will help?
Maybe. I swap out my pillows every six months, and use nose strips. Keeps that issue at bay.
The American version is total deja vu. Same actors, same shots even. But an American love interest and American dialogue. The actress in the French version is much better at broad comedy.
I can just watch the French version later.
‘Broad comedy’?
I must ring the bell of myso… myzu… misogg… you know. The thing.
Jean Reno as Agent Smith would be fucking terrible. Well. Just weird. I rather like Reno, but his whole thing is his distinctive face. Yeah, I know what Hugo looks like now, and I know makeup and costume are a thing, but it’d be hard for Reno to be the ‘generic everyperson’ look.
I think it was fate.
Janet Reno was in a movie? Oh, JEAN Reno, sorry.
I am now scarred and tormented for the rest of my life.
I can see it. Make it go away!
“Janet” is all I see, too.
Mmmm… Reno’s got that foreigner appeal, exotic, but rugged, sexuality scruffing off his salt and pepper stubble… and that Frenchness (and Spanish, I just learned) tapping that ‘outsider,’ roustabout gruff…
Oh. You’ll be sleepin’, sleepin’… sleepin’ well with J Reno tonight.
Yeah, I had to reread that as well.
I’m going to queue this up for later viewing. Thanks RJ!
You are welcome. This is a good one.
“Homeless man with 22 previous arrests allegedly kills vagrant in cane battle on NYC train
The homeless victim — identified by prosecutors as Cranston Smith — allegedly tapped snoozing stranger Keith Plummer, 68, with the cane on board a No. 1 train at the 242nd Street-Van Cortlandt Park Station around 3 a.m. Wednesday, law enforcement sources said.”
https://nypost.com/2026/05/14/us-news/homeless-man-with-22-previous-arrests-allegedly-kills-vagrant-who-roused-him-from-sleep-with-cane-on-nyc-train-cops-sources/
Maybe this can be turned into some kind of sports league?
Homeless v Vagrant? There assuredly is a regional difference between the two, but let’s go with weightclass names!
I’d gotta see the fighters, but i’m leaning towards Vagrant. Seem more wiry. Spry v the ‘settled’ nature of Homeless.
Yeah. Fuck it. Add it to the MMA shit. Why the fuck not? People, possibly me, would pay to see that shit. Again, WhyTF not?
One can hope. Wasn’t that a thing in one of the Robocop movies?
Think I’ve seen them all, but I don’t remember that.
Man! Now I have to figure out what movie that was in. Apocalyptic film, some guys were paying bums to fight on camera.
I’m sure ya can find that downtown. Still $20, but smaller wagers are also acceptable.
Surviving the Game (Rutger Hauer hunts the homeless Ice-T) almost fits that bill.
“Homeless man with 22 previous arrests”
Why are cops targeting vulnerable populations?
Oh, just in general, I’m strongly in favor of having more cane battles, and of cane battles, in general. Different classes, here, as well. Blade allowed? How big’s the knob? (Teehee! KNOB.) Plus weight classes, and we’ve got ourselves a plan.
Grand Opening? Mamdani’s front yard.
Or Congress. We need cane whipping in Congress again.
Strongly agree. The fake civility is so fake. We know they hate each other’s guts – let them show it.
“The fake civility”
IMO the civility was quite real until recently, because the Democrats and Republicans in Congress were effectively the Globetrotters and the Generals figuring out how best to shear the sheep.
But I agree with rhy that it is fake now, it’s become an existential fight of angels vs demons (depending on which side one is) over who gets to eat the whole sheep.
You used to be able to find lots of yelling in the House of Commons on C-SPAN. Haven’t checked lately.
And in this corner – Big Daddy Cane!!!
Friday Night Cane Fights
It was already a video series – Bumfights
As long as we recognize that it’s most compassionate to let them float around town on the subways all night beating each other up and assaulting random innocents than to say put them into a hospital.
Bum Fights is back!!
Whenever I see Jean Reno’s name, I always think of him and Gary Old man in The Professional.
He’s been great in so many films.
Yep. Ronin, with Robert deniro, for example.
Mission Impossible, as well. Still criminally underrated. (Well. It isn’t. But only I *champion* it.) The ‘steal NOC list from secured office’ is so fucking good. And I’ve argued here, wouldn’t be done anymore. The Act II ‘action’ scene being remarkably suspenseful?
(Those clouds seemed to respond to my shaking fist. Good.)
Ronin is one of my favorite movies and he was excellent in that.
But I always wonder, at the end of the chase when he shoots the bad guy, where the hell did he come from?
*Channels UnCivil
He came from France.
Oh yeah?
What’s the color of the boat house at Hereford?
You can’t paint your own boathouse without a form in triplicate. This is Known.
La Femme Nikita. Enough said.
French is one of those languages I cannot stand the sound of – along with Chinese and Arabic. In fact, I don’t think it’s just French, the whole Romancce language family just doesn’t agree with my ears. I can listen to German, Japanese, Even Russian, but I’m going to have to pass on this movie.
I’m in enough pain after falling down the stairs and getting bloodied and bruised. Hopefully my knuckles have stopped bleeding – they were the last still leaking when I bandaged everything.
Good Lord! This is terrible!
Thanks. Nothing life threatening assuming I don’t pick up any infected wounds, but I got them cleaned, applied white petroleum and gauze.
Yikes! Hope you are OK.
👍
I’m going to recover, it’s just one of those “Ouch!” moments.
For past 5 years I’ve been advising (telling) folks to not fall down.
Read my lips, DO NOT FALL DOWN!
You may get away with it while you’re young but age has an accumulative effect that makes getting up more difficult.
I fell down my basement steps one morning and broke the tailbone.
Out of every bone Ive broken (there’s quite a few), the coccyx is up there with the most uncomfortable to heal.
Glad you just had some scrapes.
🤕
Arabic is the only one of the bunch I find unpleasant but also the only one I have no understanding of. French is weird because it comes “easier” to me after only 1 semester of it than Italian does after taking 4 semesters.
I took a semester of French but it was my first hour class and it was the year I got 87 tardies, so the only French I learned was “Geoffrey, detencion!”
Having flunked French in 11th grade, I couldn’t go to teachers college. Whole career was different just because words spoken in French didn’t sound like they were spelled.
You dodged a bullet Creech.
Dodged? A contemporary who did go into teaching is now collecting a $90,000 annual pension, plus s.s.
JFC. Worth every penny, no doubt.
*shrug* No languages upset my ears. They’re just consonants and vowels coming out. People’s tones can certainly bother me, and I’d say Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese are the ‘most’ bothersome, but even then it’s all based on the person.
Older women getting harpy and their upward habits with the ending syllables can get a bit much, but it’s all so funny.
I hope the bleeding’s stopped and the bruises aren’t too bad. Do be well.
Make sure you’ve got fresh, white gauze for your knuckles when ya go out. Lean into the vigilant New Yorker look.
*thinks* That’s likely not what your’e going for. Hrm. I’ll think of something. You can disregard that as well, but it adds to your Curse ledger.
*We should pass more laws banning stairs!!! — Was thinking ‘stairs’ likely killed more people than ‘guns’ do/year: “Approximately 12,000 people die in the United States each year from falling down stairs. Stairway falls are the second leading cause of accidental injury, resulting in over 1 million emergency room visits annually.”
My last tumble down the stairs got me a broken left femur. (Cracked. The right femur I snapped on a curb I was sucker punched on.)
Good night?!
I hope you heal up quickly.
I’m still gimping from when I fell out of a truck last week.
No fun.
I’m happy to be back in the (937). I used to spend 2 or 2 1/2 weeks on the west coast, working in refineries. That wasn’t as bad as 5 days in Newark.
And on topic- a young french broad sat next to me on my flight out. She was cute, petite, and was wearing a sleeveless top. She went to adjust her neck pillow and she had pits more hairy than mine.
Oh, and she smelled vaguely like a steaming pile of my Rottie’s shit. Such a shame.
So petite isn’t the biggest turnoff for you?
*discerned gaze, dipped in disbelief*
Let petite? (Don’t be fooled. I can’t speak Froggy).
Doesn’t sound like your type.
Not my type. Just making an observation on a stereotype.
As tiny as she was? I’d split that in two like a piece of dry hickory.
Throw her in a canal, she’ll come out clean.
Go on…
/not afraid of pits, pussy, or leg hair
This made me think of another Jean Reno film, Family Pack that my wife likes. https://www.imdb.com/news/ni64904777/
I bet I’ll like these movies.
I move to one of the few libertarian districts only for the rabid wing of MAGA to take it over. *sigh* I hate people.
There’s a libertarian district?
(*pssst* Not worth your time. Still $20. But they’re reeaaaally vigilant about their time sheets.)
“Republican” running for state senate next district over is a Califucktard carpetbagger who, surprise surprise surprise, was a tax supporting wannabe Democrat politician back home.
Mango-ward penned a NYT piece to support Massie. 🤦♂️
I’m noticing a new and rather interesting line of propaganda from the left not seen since 2008 when Obama pretended to care about the deficit.
Start it with Mamdani, the new darling and poster-boy of progressive pipedreams. Kickback some cash from the state to bail him out and postpone a few costly policies for NYC. Kick the can down the road in other aspects like with pensions. What do you know, he has a balanced budget (for one single fiscal year while increasing costs in the future)! Hochul is fucking the rest of the state over to sell “democratic socialism” to the entire country. Redirecting funds that would go to the rest of the state to relatively wealthier New Yorkers. It makes for a nice headline for morons that don’t think. Pretend that we really can spend limitlessly on progressive schemes and be fiscally responsible without raising taxes on workers.
Then there’s the bullshit with Newsome balancing his budget this year thanks to a supposed windfall of tax revenue. Ignore the massive debt California is in and how it’s grown under his watch for years. No, this is the real face of progressivism – the fiscally responsible kind that claims to balance the budget out the door to ward off attacks for his presidential campaign.
Mayors and governors can’t just print money out of thin air, so they have to violate MMT and pretend deficits matter.
Cuomo *wanted* the covid “crisis” to continue so he could get Biden elected and a bailout as part of the covid relief.
Hantavirus to the rescue …
Hochul is up for reelection and she knows where the big donations are coming from now and it’s not “moderate” Democrats, it’s radical socialists. It was only a matter of time before she fell under the spell of that POS and started spraying money at him.
Yay! Friday!
Get out there and kick some commie ass, y’all.
🥾🍑👍
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLxV_FtZSt8
🎶🎶
I’m tired though, man. And the bruises just started blooming in their full color.
😟
🤕
How are things with you?
OK. My boss is off, so it should be a quiet day at work.
Funny that. My supervisor is off too (And will be off all next week). Fridays also tend to be quiet in the office.
Good morning, Sean, U, Ted’S., and Grumble!
Good morning, GT and all.
Not the picture that goes with the story
The headline is “Girl, 17, dies after ATV crash in Shandaken, police say”. But they’re showing a picture from a mile away, and from the end of winter what with the snow and icicles. I was out that way two weeks ago, and there definitely wasn’t snow on the ground. A bit of frost at 3700′, but that would have melted by midday.
https://www.dailyfreeman.com/wp-content/uploads/migration/2015/02/2d604bdf567623e4aafc168329e5319f.jpg?w=879
They only have two Shandaken pictures, and it’s too early for the summer one?
They at least could have gotten a picture of the town hall.
My local rag does something like that. Every story has a picture they choose from a small collection of snapshots taken around town. Like every crime article shows the same pic of the police station.
Since Podunkville fired the part time cop crime has gone way down and the convenience store started making a profit
Donut sales thru the roof?
A French film starring Jean Reno? Find me a French film not starring Jean Reno, that would be news.
An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge.
The Passion of Joan of Arc