By james art This rather sweet time-traveling comedy evokes welcome memories of the French classic Les Visiteurs, especially with the latter’s star Jean Reno on board. In this case, he heads in the opposite direction, as a demented grandfather sent back to 1497 after completing a round of Jumanji-style magic with his family. The film is based on the card game Werewolves of Millers Hollow, but manages not to be too cynical for a giant extended commercial, with some champagne spontaneity.
Although his house has been turned into a log cabin, Gilbert (Renault) finds his mind restored after crash landing in the Middle Ages. And that’s not all: each family member is gifted with a power related to the role they play in the game. As a Hunter, he has a super-strength; his son Jerome (Frank Dubosc), who was the Watcher, can read minds; and his granddaughter Clara (Lisa Do Couto Texeira) is now invisible (old satire). After flinching at the execution of a suspected sorcerer, they realize they must identify and kill the werewolves in the city in order to win the game and return to the future.
Without the double-edged bite of Les Visiteurs, which simultaneously took aim at the antiquated absurdities of the past and the 20th century, Family Pack has a good degree of old-time Bill and Ted sport. It’s especially fun on the feminist front, with lawyer-mother Marie (Suzanne Cleman) finding herself in hot water for trying to stand up for the village’s battered wives (that is, all of them). And for a family film, it also deals (cautiously) with sexuality, with Bruno Guerri pleasantly twisted as an Italian neighbor whose preferences put him out of step with the other villagers.
As the family hunts down the massive lycanthropes in the style of Maurice Sendak (done with practical effects, not CGI), the plot is a bit of a first. But it’s a perfectly accurate board game adaptation as far as well-packaged, undemanding fun goes.