Mr Bean's Holiday
Monday, 30 April 2007. Film.
I'll keep it brief. Mr Bean (Rowan Atkinson), returns for more side-splitting and rib-tickling japes in Mr Bean's Holiday. Well that was the intention anyway, in reality the film is less funny than having your eyes gouged out with a blunt pencil.
Mr. Bean, is the lucky winner of a local church contest, and is awarded an all expense paid trip across the English Channel, to France. Making his way across the beautiful French countryside, he samples the food, baffles the natives, and generally does the Mr Bean thing of getting his tie caught in ticket machines and other 'hilarious' escapades. Yes, I am using the word in an ironic sense.
Based in France, I was slightly worried by the plot, as Rowan is not one of the worlds most natural francophiles.
They, (the French), are so uncompromising in their view of the world, which is why they are such a fantastically rich source of comedy. They are so relentless and so clear in their view of things, and they won't be shoved off that position by anything. What's also good is that, generally speaking, making jokes about the French appears to be something that nobody really minds. The French don't even care, they just go about their lives regardless.
Rowan Atkinson, an interview with BBC Films
Quite apart from the little boy that Mr Bean abducts, which is just creepy, the film simple isn't funny. As I have stated before, never, never, ever, let your girlfriend pick films to see- they will be bad.
I like slapstick humor, I will watch a black and white silent film, and enjoy it. I have watched Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, and watching 114 minutes of French silent humor is not something you undertake lightly. But this film isn't funny, and the ending, (which I won't spoil), simply bemused myself and the girlfriend. The cinema we were in had a lot of kids, and I think they were pretty bored by the end of it too.
The TV series were brilliant as partly it was silent, in the best tradition of Chaplin, Keaton, and Tati, and written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton. Rowan Atkinson is an extremely talented actor, when he has good writing behind him. Look at the first series of Blackadder, before the Curtis / Elton partnership, and you will see what I mean.
Funny films should make you laugh, this didn't. On the plus side, Rowan Atkinson announced that this movie would be the last story of the character, Mr. Bean. Let us hope that is the case, and finally he will become once and for all, a has-bean.
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