Review: Mr. Bean's Holiday

G-rated films are rare enough these days, but a G-rated film not meant strictly for kids? Intriguing. It was the one aspect of Mr. Bean's Holiday that caught my attention. The movie is obviously meant to appeal to a wide audience -- an international audience, in fact. Unfortunately the humor is uneven and generally tended to annoy me more than it entertained. However, fans of Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean character, from the TV show or the other movie, might feel very different about the film.

The film's humor is strictly physical, in a way that often pays homage to classic silent-film comedy or the films of Jacques Tati -- with varying degrees of success. The story is not especially important, as it's all a setup for the title character's shtick. Mr. Bean (Atkinson) is a very British, very clumsy man who rarely speaks, and then mostly in incoherent mumbles. At a gloomy church raffle, Bean wins a trip to the south of France -- specifically, to Cannes. He also wins a video camera, with which he becomes obsessed. You get the impression that the sad little man has never left his neighborhood; when he gets lost in Paris, he sets a compass in the direction where he wants to go, and walks in mid-street, over cars, through stores, to get to his destination. (I found that to be one of the funnier conceits in the film.) Through a series of misunderstandings, Bean ends up stuck in rural France with a small French boy, and they have to find a way to get to Cannes, videotaping their antics all the way. Bean also keeps running into the lovely French actress Sabine (Emma de Caunes) and a crazy American actor/director (Willem Dafoe).

The movie has a shaky start, relying heavily for humor on Bean's exaggerated facial expressions and his complete stupidity. One can only put up with so much shameless mugging -- I mean, the guy makes Silent Bob appear subtle. However as the film gains momentum and turns into a loose road-trip movie, Bean's face takes a bit of a rest and a few genuinely funny scenes occasionally pop up.The best moments are the ones with a little cleverness behind them: Bean's way of earning money as a street musician when he has no instrument (especially the operatic bit) had me laughing out loud, and the payoff on Bean's video-camera footage is well worth sitting through the so-so scenes where he shot the stuff in the first place. Any scene with Dafoe in it is delightful; he adds a wonderful comic mania.

Mr. Bean's Holiday reminds me of a movie I saw earlier this year and liked more than it probably deserved -- Gregg Araki's Smiley Face (which needs a theatrical release, by the way). In both films, the protagonist has to get from Point A to Point B, but is so dim (or stoned) that what should be a simple trip becomes more complicated, elaborate and unintentionally funny. The difference is that we understand why Anna Faris' character in Smiley Face is hampered -- she's stoned out of her gourd. I don't know enough about Bean to understand why he does certain things, except that of course that it's funnier if he can't get something right. Is he an idiot, or simply naive, or a victim of bad luck? The movie is driven more by the potential for comedy than by the character's personality. At one point, Bean is so obnoxious that a boy smacks him out of his seat, which was what I wanted to do myself. By the film's end, I felt much more sympathetic toward the character, but nothing has happened to effect a change -- it's just inconsistent.

Unfortunately, the funnier second half of Mr. Bean's Holiday didn't quite redeem the often tiresome first half. Another movie I remembered while watching this one was The Tall Guy, my favorite Atkinson role, in which he parodies himself as a man who makes everyone laugh onstage -- but is a complete and total jerk offstage. (Turns out that Tall Guy scribe Richard Curtis has also worked on various Mr. Bean projects and has a producer credit on this film.) I enjoy watching Atkinson more when he gets wittier dialogue and a nastier character. But if you're a Mr. Bean / Atkinson fan, you'll probably appreciate the offerings of Mr. Bean's Holiday more than I do, and will take pleasure in watching him make faces, mimic John Cleese's silly walks, and basically act like an idiot.