Movies: The Visitors | Multiplicity
Anime: Dancougar

H.G. Wells meets Monty Python in a boys' locker room

Our pick:
1 2 3 4 5

• The Visitors
• Rated R
• Starring Jean Reno, Christian Clavier
• 110 minutes
• In French, subtitled

he year is 1122, when toothpaste and deodorant aren't even a pale glimmer on the event horizon, and ticking off a witch is a really bad idea. But unfortunately for Godefroy, Count of Montmiral, a nasty old beldame has taken up residence in his woods, and she doesn't take kindly to his attempts to haul her off to be burned at the stake.

One magical potion and a few hallucinations later, he's accidentally murdered his fiancee's father, and his beloved ex-bride-to-be is packing up and heading for a convent. A second magical potion later, his attempts to go back in time to rectify that mistake have backfired, and he and his aptly-named manservant Jacquasse the Crass find themselves in 1996, surrounded by their own descendants and in danger of being escorted to the nearest loony bin.

Fortunately, Bea, the newest Countess of Montmiral, recognizes Godefroy from an old painting. She deduces from the resemblance that he must be a relative -- perhaps a distant cousin who disappeared mysteriously after a racing accident. Assuming he's suffering from amnesia, she cheerfully defends him to her husband and the boorish family friend who's converted the Montmiral castle into an overpriced theme hotel. But Godefroy is determined to make it back to the past, if for no other reason than to found the Montmiral line and ensure that Bea actually gets born.

This far-fetched setup provides a launch-point for a lot of low humor that quickly passes crude and plunges into locker-room crass. The endless jokes about Jacquasse' odor, table manners and bodily functions do eventually become tiresome, as do the predictable forays into bathroom humor.

But beyond the worst of the crudity is a hysterically funny farce reminiscent of Monty Python's Holy Grail with an actual plot. From Jacquasse's first encounter with a car -- which he proclaims to be "the Devil's chariot," prompting Godefroy to beat it into submission -- to the time-travelers' attempts to deal with electric lights, The Visitors is crammed full of memorable, high-energy slapstick and nonstop visual gags.

And the story balances out the gross-out jokes, as Jacquasse discovers that his descendant, not the Count's, now owns the ancestral castle, and that "Liberty, equality, fraternity" means even a despised peasant can now live like a small king. The resulting class struggle gives The Visitors a message and a bit of much-appreciated weight.

French actor Jean Reno, who has a habit of playing humorless heavies (The Professional, Mission Impossible), seems to have an immense amount of fun galloping around as Godefroy. His performance sets an exhausting pace not only for the rest of the hyper cast, but for the audience as well. The Visitors isn't highbrow humor, but it's overwhelmingly fast, furious and funny.

I may have to see this one again just for the lyrics to that song about killing off your enemy and hanging him up next to his bowels. My sides still hurt. -- Tasha

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Are four Michael Keatons funnier than one?

Our pick:
1 2 3 4 5

• Multiplicity
• PG-13
• Starring Michael Keaton, Andie MacDowell
• 110 minutes

oug Kinney (Keaton) can't keep up with his life. His job as a construction company executive constantly demands more hours, his wife wants to get a job and his two kids rarely see him. He's a man with too many things to do and not enough time to do them. Meanwhile, all he really wants to do is go sailing.

Doug meets Dr. Owen Leeds (Harris Yulin), a geneticist who offers to help. It seems Dr. Leeds has perfected a way to create a flawless human clone in just a couple of hours. After a little convincing, Doug goes for it. Doug #2 turns out to be a macho fellow who's happy to handle the construction job, but who doesn't quite appreciate being hidden in an apartment over the garage so Doug's wife, Laura (MacDowell), doesn't find out about him.

Having more time to spend with his family, Doug should be completely happy. But somehow his new Mr. Mom role doesn't quite suit him either, and Doug #3 is created to help out at home. After the clones decide they need some help, Doug #4 is cooked up and turns out to be more than a little defective. Can these four Dougs find happiness with one wife, two kids, a job and a house?

Multiplicity is an actor's dream. Keaton gets to be macho, sensitive, goofy and even normal, all by playing Doug Kinney. He's very funny in this comedy of errors, mostly playing off himself. Occasionally MacDowell has a good moment in the mostly-understanding-wife-and-mother role, but this is Keaton's movie first and foremost. Gratifyingly, special effects wizard Richard Edlund has woven together the various Dougs so well that it hardly seems like special effects at all, giving Keaton the room he needs to play all four roles convincingly.

But while Multiplicity is funny (sometimes very funny), it has a sitcom-like feel to it. The film is just a setup for some slapstick, and there is no emotion behind the characters or the clones. A movie with an absurd premise can succeed if the characters react in a logical way. However, Multiplicity doesn't worry about such things. For example, if clones have the exact memories and feelings of the original up to the point of the cloning, how could they possibly stand to let go of a family the real Doug loves very much?

Basically, this film is a male fantasy movie for men trapped in all that terrible family responsibility stuff (working for a living, watching their own kids, picking up after themselves and...gasp...being supportive of their wives). In the end, there are no surprises and the same old lesson is always learned.

Multiplicity is a chuckle because of all the Michael Keatons, but there's not much else to admire. The film is unlikely to be remembered much after the empty popcorn box is tossed away. -- Kathie

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It doesn't pay to make a Super Bestial Machine God angry...

Our pick:
1 2 3 4 5

• Dancougar: Super Bestial Machine God
  Volumes I & II
• Software Sculptors
• $19.95, subtitled
• 110 minutes
• Volume I, July 1996
• Volume II, Sept. 1996

hen a powerful alien empire invades the Earth and steamrolls over its conventional military forces, it falls to the enterprising Japanese and their super-technology to save the day. Although the war has closed the Space Academy in Australia, a Japanese scientist gathers a few of the school's most unruly elements to help test a new battle system -- a series of machines based on Earth animals and equipped with revolutionary "computerized instinct centers."

His four new recruits are aggressive, temperamental and egotistical. None of them can be bothered to sit down and read the manuals for their new super machines, and they pay no attention to orders from their superiors. In fact, they spend more time lording their skills over one other than functioning as the team they are supposed to be.

In particular, their leader Shinobu seems incapable of talking to a rival without attempting to slug him and inevitably getting beaten up. And the team's only female member, Sara, is subject to increasingly divided loyalties as her lover Shapiro defects to the enemy empire and becomes one of its chief commanders.

But the worst personality traits of these "Cyber-Beast Force" pilots seem to be essential to the operation of the new machines, which literally generate power from their users' anger. As Earth's cities fall one by one, the Cyber-Beast Force becomes angrier -- and thus effectively stronger.

Dancougar, which is being released in eight volumes for a total of 38 episodes, is hardly state-of-the-art animation. It's standard 1980s television fare (complete with commercial breaks) in the Voltron/Battle of the Planets vein. The style is crisp, detailed and generally more impressive than American cartoons of the same era, but not up to today's breathtaking anime standards.

The story lines, however, are more intriguing than most cartoon fare. In particular, the characters' sheer obnoxiousness is a novelty. These teenagers, with their hair-trigger tempers and arrogant posturing, are hardly role models, but they're a breath of fresh air compared to the usual idealized cartoon heroes.

The individual episodes tend to become redundant, as about half of each is dedicated to a big fight between the Cyber-Beast Force and the invading aliens. But the series' dramatically slow pacing, the aliens' effective ongoing advances and the plot arcs crossing from episode to episode all combine to give the impression that Dancougar is irrevocably advancing towards a finale. Which is also rare for a television cartoon.

And some episodes are uniquely touching -- particularly one about a group of children ordered to "defend" an abandoned fortress while their parents head off to be slaughtered by the invaders. The show's inevitable shoot-em-up segments may be predictable, but all in all, Dancougar goes out on an emotional limb far more often than most cartoons. And those kind of details make this series considerably more than the sum of its parts.

Dancougar is a pretty enjoyable watch. At $20 per two-hour tape, it's also a really impressive deal in an industry where videotape prices can exceed a dollar per minute. -- Tasha

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