Marie-Anne Chazel Movies

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

Ratings wars on nightly news and lovers quarrels are parodied in this French comedy. The people behind the TV8 news are obsessed with getting good ratings. After their anchor suffers a debilitating accident, Gerard Breha is called to replace him. Breha, a minor market newscaster was chosen because he possesses the kind of face deemed most trustworthy by the French public. Sure enough his ratings soar. He interviews a politician about the YAM gang who have been terrorizing local gun shops. Corine, Breha's wife is getting frustrated as his popularity has caused him to be increasingly away from home. Soon the newscaster is seduced by his predatory producer Marie-Ange. Corine is out for revenge. She gets it when she and Breha appear on the French version of "Truth or Consequences." The show is suddenly interrupted by the YAM gang as they burst into the studio and begin taking hostages. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Long ago, when they were mere lads, the men of this movie had belonged to a rock group. When their lead singer, a woman many of them love, left the group to move to Canada, they broke up and the men went their seperate ways. They remained in contact, friendly, but somewhat distant. The impending arrival of their old lead singer for a concert (she's now a successful pop singer), has brought them back together. All their old romantic feelings and unhealed rivalries come out for an airing, along with reminiscences of bygone days. Each of them has his life revived in some way by this unexpectedly momentous event. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

French pop singer Michel Sardou plays detective Thomas "Cross" Crosky in this uneven thriller. When Cross's ex-wife and daughter are kidnapped, he hires notorious hit man Eli Cantor (Roland Giraud) to help carry out his plan of vengeance. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The clash in this Philippe De Broca comedy between a bored middle-class stiff and a much more exciting, lawless female offers no new insights into the genre. Hubert Durieux (Claude Brassuer) works in a staid bank job and has to put up with demands from his ex-wife and a daughter who may not have made the right choice in a husband. Other females plague him, but the one who turns him around is a gypsy (Valerie Kaprisky) who first gets his attention by stealing his car. Once she has captured his manly interest, she tricks and cons him into a daring adventure that shatters the moralistic four walls he has built around himself. Some of the Romany (gypsy) population may not be too happy with this stereotypical portrayal, no matter how charming the thief. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Three workers in a social services office on Christmas Eve find themselves the center of a vortex of rag-tag humanity that all need their professional help, and more. Their visit from Santa Claus does not involve a trip down a chimney, but a walk-in by a somewhat derelict, irascible St. Nick hunting for the unfortunate Mrs. Nick, whose girth is wider than her husband's because she's carrying the future little Nick or Nicola -- she also has a sack, given that she is a bag lady, and she herself is in need of an orthodontist. This unusual couple is complemented by other characters in need of assistance, including a woefully abject transvestite and one character who no longer needs assistance because corpses are pretty much beyond help. Events conspire to bring everyone to the zoo, a fitting place for the cast of eccentrics, social workers not excluded. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Based on a successful cabaret theater play, Come to my Place, I'm Living with my Girlfriend features Guy (Michel Blanc) as a carefree and morally challenged gas station attendant suddenly in need of a place to live. It seems his boss caught him trying to cheat his customers, and Guy was thrown out on his ear. He saves the day for himself by wheedling his way into the good graces of two friends, Daniel (Bernard Girardeau) and Francoise (Therese Liotard), a young couple who are easy-going and willing to share their apartment with him "for a few days." The "few days" turn into week after week, as Guy connives to stretch out his good fortune as far as he can. Acting as though his welcome will never wear out, he further strains the relationship with Francoise and Daniel by entertaining a series of girlfriends - for whom he has an undying passion. His antics begin to short-circuit the happy relationship that Daniel and Francoise have always enjoyed, and sooner or later, the problem of "Guy" will have to be resolved before fuses are blown for good. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this satire, Coluche plays an inept king of France who is continually in danger of overthrow or murder by his scheming court and is kept on the throne by the efforts of his Musketeers, who also serve by wringing extra taxes out of the already hard-pressed population. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi