Movie Sneak Peek: Mr. Bean's Holiday

I fell in love at a young age with an early 1990's British television show, Mr. Bean. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) brings to mind Charlie Chaplin with an ignorant and selfish streak. Bean's awkward demeanor is very childish and possibly extra terrestrial in nature. The slapstick that Atkinson does in the outlandish scenarios was generally a riot because it came so naturally. Nothing was forced just to gain a laugh. Therein lies the problem with the two Bean movies. The first film, Bean, arrived in theaters ten years ago. The script anchored itself on previous sketches shown in the TV show, which churned out a half baked story. Those sketches worked perfectly in a confined thirty minute show but in a ninety minute film with very little originality, the bean was spoilt.

Ten years later, one would think at least Atkinson would realize the mistakes in the first translation to the big screen. Sadly, this is not the case as Mr. Bean's Holiday is a terrible film. Whereas Bean was watchable, Mr. Bean's Holiday is the type of movie that requires you to tape your eyelids open.

This time out, the story is no longer a carbon copy of the show, but instead a stale, fathomless parade of stupidity. Mr. Bean wins a trip to the Cannes Film Festival and brings along his camcorder that he pulls out every five seconds. As he prepares to get on the train, he accidentally separates a father and his son when he asks the father to film him boarding. Ashamed, Bean decides he will take the son, Stepan, around with him, hoping to find the father eventually. The father, luckily enough, is a famous film director and will be at Cannes. What proceeds is a bunch of dull gags that never work because nothing is fleshed out. The story barely exists; evident when the filmmakers chose to use fifty percent of the footage from Bean's camcorder and then rely on the camcorder for the final plot point. This is an exercise in bad screenwriting and filmmaking.

It would have been more enjoyable if Atkinson had just been running around onscreen, doing pointless but funny skits. Then, even without the story, at least there would be no interference from the filmmakers and no asinine climax.