I had almost forgotten Mr. Bean. Rowan Atkinson’s beloved British bafoon was a great counter discussion topic for me and other high school hipsters when others were talking about Friends. How can Chandler stack against Bean, I ask you? Hell, even Friends ended up riffing on Bean when Joey got his head stuck in a turkey. Sorry Friends, but Bean got there first and best. Bean’s new adventure seems to have gotten a critical trounce in the States, which I don’t get. Could it be that Bean is too sophisticated for Americans? Yikes.



To be fair, Mr Bean’s Holiday is not breaking any new ground, we get the same old Bean in the same old series of misunderstandings and mistaken identities as he falls ass backwards from one comically unintentional set-up to the other. After winning a church raffle, Bean departs for a holiday in Cannes, France. On the train trip though his desire to get the perfect shot of him boarding the train results in a Russian film director missing the same train with his son already aboard. Bean takes it upon himself to return the boy to his father despite his, as Mr Burns would say, incompetent bafoonery, including making a powerful enemy in Willem Dafoe, I mean Carson Clay.



Of course, like any movie based on a series of shorts or sketches, Mr Bean’s Holiday feels like a series of vignettes sewn together by a common narrative. The episode structure is nice as we follow Bean from adventure to adventure, but it’s just not overly ambitious is it? Atkinson still hits it out of the park though. And while I know that others will say that Bean is not Atkinson’s best creation (Black Adder is the correct answer by the way), he’s still a stunning example of silent comedy. Put him in soundless, black & white film with a piano soundtrack and the point still gets across.



So Bean’s not original, so what? I had a good time and I laughed a lot. Bean still works and if you’re a Bean fan from ages past then I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too.