Visitors: This huge mistake that escaped the whole team

With an attendance of 13.78 million when it was released in 1993, Les Visiteurs is still the 15th best-grossing cinema in France. It brings together Jean Reno, Christian Clavier and Valérie Lemercier in front of Jean-Marie Poiret’s camera for a time-traveling period comedy. And precisely, the film’s biggest mistake is related to the chronology.

In the film, Godfroy de Montmireil, known as “The Bold”, and his disciple Jacquiel the Bastard decide to go back in time to correct a tragic mistake that cost Godfroy his marriage and his stepfather’s life. But the apothecary makes a mistake in the medicine and here they are, not minutes before the tragedy, but hundreds of years later! Then they will rub shoulders with their descendants: Beatrice de Montmireil and Jacques-Henri Jacquard.

When he arrived in 1992, Godefroy met a local priest and gave the date of his birth, which the priest then reported to Béatrice de Montmirail: 1076.

A claim that is also confirmed by the Montmiral family history book that Beatrice shows her husband Jean-Pierre, which confirms the information by giving Godfroy’s birth date as 1076 and yet!

A few dozen minutes into the film, when Godfroy has long been posing as “Cousin Hubert” to his little baby girl Beatrice, he finally decides to tell her the truth and reveal her identity. With this he remembers the date of his birth, which this time is… 1079!

One could accept that Godfroy did not know his date of birth very well, as the records were undoubtedly more uncertain than today, or imagine that it was a Montmireil family book that might have contained an error, but this is not the case!

Indeed, Godfroy himself is the one who mentions his birth date twice throughout the film and makes a mistake in one scene, thus creating an inconsistency regarding the character’s past. Fortunately, this mistake doesn’t affect the film enough to make it a downer, and it doesn’t spoil the fun offered by Jean-Marie Poire and Christian Clavier, nor the laughs it can generate! “Do you want flexibility?”