Mr. Bean's Holiday

Mr. Bean's Holiday *1/2

Directed by Simon McBurney
Written by Harnish McColl

Starring:
Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean
Emma de Caunes as Sabine
Max Baldry as Stepan
Willem Dafoe as Carson Clay

90 Minutes(Rated PG for brief mild language. )
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And now with "Mr. Bean's Holiday" we have come to the ending of our massive summer of sequels. And this is the one that everyone keeps forgetting, and like most of the others, it isn't very good. Now I like Mr. Bean. When I was a little kid I would watch the television show whenever it came on, and was always entertained by Bean's antics-the one that I recall best is when he ends up with a Christmas turkey over his head, a skit that was revisited in the "Bean" film that came out almost a decade ago. The new Bean film is problematic-and it made me realize that the character is fun to watch, but only in small amounts of time. In a ninety minute film, not so much.

Rowan Atkinson is a very talented actor both physically and verbally. While the Bean films rely more on physical comedy than verbal comedy, I know that he can do things dramatically after last years hilarious "Keeping Mum." His character of Mr. Bean is a quiet, silly, and yet innocent man with the mind of child in a way. The film starts on a rainy afternoon in London and Bean wins a raffle prize to the beach in Cannes, France. The trouble starts right away, from getting into the wrong taxicab, to making a man miss his train, leaving his young son onboard. Bean ends up pairing up with the kid, and the two of them end up traveling to Cannes together, with the help of a beautiful French actress, leading them to the premiere of the new film by ultra pretentious director Carson Clay (played by Willem Dafoe-that's right, Willen Dafoe is in this movie). Bean is eventually mistaken for the kidnapper of the young boy, and everyone is after him, but he just walks right by as if nothing is the matter.

Atkinson does play the Bean character well, and he never breaks from it. When I saw him do something straight in "Keeping Mum" I was surprised by his comedic range, but he goes back to his basics here. The problem with "Mr. Bean's Holiday" is that there is no counter-Bean. There is no straight man by his side to balance him out. Even the kid he is paired with is stupid. There is no intelligence anywhere. It was just ninety minutes of pure Bean, pure goofy Bean. And goofy Bean is funny, and I found myself laughing at the first twenty minutes or so-the length of the television show-but after that it just became frustrating to watch. As constant mishaps piled up and up, it just began to annoy me. The films best moments come in the third act, at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie within a movie-Carson Clay's pretentious drivel that everyone sleeps through by himself-is pretty funny, as is the conclusion where Bean eventually saves the day. But at times "Mr. Bean's Holiday" grew tiresome. The character is funny but in small doses. Stick to the television show if this is your first Bean experience, otherwise the character may rub you the wrong way.

And so the summer of sequels is over, and the fall movie season is just around the corner. . .