Les Couloirs Du Temps - Les Visiteurs II (1998)

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At $23 million, this sequel cost three times as much as the earlier Les Visiteurs (1993), France's second largest postwar success (with 13.6 million tickets sold). The follow-up features a voiceover summary of the first film while pages flip in an illuminated book. In the 1993 film, a magic potion launched 11th-century knight Godefroy de Montmirail (Jean Reno) and his loyal vassal Jacquouille la Fripouille (Christian Clavier) spinning through time to the modern-day French countryside where they found the Montmirail chateau converted into an upscale resort run by Jacquart (also played by Clavier), an innkeeper soon transported to the Middle Ages. The sequel opens with a prologue showing Jacquouille and Ginette (Marie-Anne Chazel) creating confusion in a contemporary supermarket. A stolen relic left in the 20th Century must be returned to the past, or Godefroy's marriage will be cursed. Jacquart faces his own problems -- wolves, angry peasants, torture, and burning at the stake. All the key characters flit back and forth between the 1990s and the past. In the present day, playboy Hubert de Montmirail (Reno) has been missing for 15 years, and his shrewish wife Cora (Claire Nadeau) finds the missing relic. When Godefroy turns up, he's naturally assumed to be the missing Hubert. Les Visiteurs II had the biggest opening day in French film history, breaking the record set by Men in Black and generating Gallic guffaws galore in a country where few films ever receive the sequel treatment. English language title The Corridors of Time: The Visitors II. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi