Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007)

Mr. Bean scores a home run... again!

The affable bumbling simpleton from England is back, this time rollicking his way to the south beaches of Cannes, Fr., and boy does he score a home run with one!

Mr. Bean wins a church raffle lottery and a trip to lovely Cannes. He also wins a never-to-parted-with handycam as part of the package win. These are enough and off he sets. However, where there's Mr. Bean, how can trouble be far behind...

There are twists and turns, in typical Mr. Bean style, and he's able to separate a son from his father, miss his train, lose his passport, miss the bus which he had to take instead of the train, drive with his eyelids clipped open, drive an egotistical movie director nuts, win over the heart of a budding French actress... the list can go on and on.

But then, you aren't here to read the story and all the pranks. You'd much rather see them. And, IMO, that would be an excellent idea!

The child in Mr. Bean (rather, the child Mr. Bean!) takes over this movie, and he's been able to deliver an even better package than the original movie years ago.

What separates a Mr. Bean movie from other slapstick creations of the genre is that he takes amusement (of the audience) to new heights, hitherto maintained by the likes of Sir Charles Chaplin. Whoever says really funny gags require good dialogue delivery doesn't know Mr. Bean.

Atkinson has made unbelievably funny moments out of otherwise drab sequences.. like (trying to) dial all the possible nos. to reach the boy's father, lip-syncing an opera on a sunny afternoon in a suburban French town marketplace, eating a seafood platter... in short, really a commendable job.

Why not 5 / 5 - you ask? Well, some of the sequences seemed a bit stretched out to me, and seemed to be placed not to further the story or the plot but just because they had been thought of in the first place and had to be accommodated.

Highly watchable nevertheless!
My favorite scene - the opera in the marketplace!!

Overall score: 4 / 5 July 6, 2008

Deeper than you think

I truly enjoyed watching this film. Having studied a number of foreign languages, I could understand almost all of the dialogue, and the use of different languages gave a lovely multicultural breadth. The beautiful scenery added even more richness.

The casting I felt was particularly good. You've got to have ordinary people whom Mr. Bean can play off of. All of the characters were believable, especially the movie director and the young boy. The young actress was too good to be true! What a beautiful role she played!

Mr. Atkinson takes his work as a communicator very seriously, and the humor is only part of the equation. For example, the lost bus ticket; what does it mean? Is it merely a means to get him running after a chicken? No. I believe it represents the typically puny way we as human beings try to determine our existence, instead of trusting God to introduce us to the Sabines of this world and line up the bus roofs for us to walk on to the beach.

So, for the many who underappreciate this film, I would encourage them to watch it again, and purposefully look beyond the childishness. The English tend to be quite subtle about things, and we Americans miss a lot more than we realize. June 23, 2008

After This Film, Maybe He Should "Speak Up" A Little More...

Meh. I found Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean somewhat entertaining on the BBC (aired for me on PBS) in the early 90's, and even found the first film "Bean" with a few chuckles, but the silent well's run dry here. In it, Bean wins a contest to go to the Cannes Film Festival, yet only wants to go for the beach (?). Of course he goes on his usual unapoligetic destructive path and loses his tickets, way, and you know how it usually goes from there. But as with other road-movies, this one just seemed to go nowhere. And what bet did Willem Dafoe lose to have to appear in this one? Man, talk about career slumming, even though his character's movie-within-a-movie bit was a tad interesting (yet not funny either).

Another "watched off the TiVo" expierence. And with the delete button, it now feels relieved. June 22, 2008

Mr. Bean

This was a gift for my brother who just loves to watch this man! Very funny June 16, 2008

Mr. Bean Is Not Lost In Translation

Last fall I was on an airplane on a 12 hr flight from Hong Kong. This was one of the movies playing. There were quite a few Chinese students on the plane. It was amazing how this little Englishman had those people nearly falling out of their seats laughing. Two Chinese men sitting beside me were nearly crying from laughter.

I have to say this comedy was far better than the American crap I had to watch going over (License to Wed, Evan Almighty, Knocked up. )I didn't hear any out loud laughter from any of those.

The great thing about Mr. Bean movies is the subtlety (sometimes) of the comedy. Mr. Bean is a one-man demolition derby whose actions start a cascade of destruction and chaos that he himself is completely OBLIVIOUS to! (And when Mr. Bean gets near vehicles with motors, WATCH OUT!)

As in the opening scenes where he spills coffee into a sleeping train passenger's PC and the person in the other seat gets blamed and a huge fight ensues off the train in which cops are running in from each direction. Mr. Bean has no idea what he's started.

The other hilarious scene was when he was locked in the little outhouse building on the side of the road. The only way to get out is to get hit by a truck. This was not shown. He carried the building out of scene onto the highway. You hear a huge truck's horn, then a tremendous crash, wood flying. Leaving it to our imaginations was far funnier than seeing the explosion. Atkinson's comedic secret is he gets into little stupid things that we ourselves get into, but hope no one's around to see it. There's no projectile vomiting or extreme toilet humor that American comedy writers (I use that term loosely) stoop to incessantly.

However, I wish there'd been more scenes like this. I hope Atkinson sticks to Mr. Bean and makes another movie, but please, MORE very clever sight gags like the two above. June 13, 2008

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