| Product: |
Mr Bean's Holiday (DVD) |
| Date: |
04/04/07 (492 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: At least there's one mildly amusing joke
Disadvantages: Contrived, dull, unfunny and tired
What’s it about?
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Mr Bean wins a raffle at a church fete. His prize: a trip to France and a video camera.
Who’s in it?
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Rowan Atkinson re-appears as Mr Bean, the hapless idiot who causes chaos wherever he goes. Like much else, Atkinson seems to have become a little lazy in the ten years since Bean was released. Whereas the first film portrayed Bean as someone who was always doing silly things, here Atkinson relies too much on pulling silly faces or moving in a strange way to get laughs. Even by the standards of physical comedy, it looks tired. At times he looks like he is just going through the motions, rather than actually enjoying himself. The sad truth of it is that Atkinson is now too old to get away with this kind of material – and I think he knows it as much as the viewer.
Max Baldry turns up as Stephan, who accidentally ends up travelling with Bean, whilst Emma de Caunes also gets caught up as token French person Sabine. The trouble is, although these two are supposedly Mr Bean’s companions for parts of his journey, we barely find anything out about them. Baldry tries (and fails) to be the cute little child sidekick, whilst de Caunes is there as a kind of love interest – a little difficult given the complete lack of chemistry between her and Bean. Worse still, there’s no continuity. Characters appear, disappear and re-appear at random, as the “plot” demands it – often in increasingly contrived situations. As such, it’s difficult to build up any engagement or sympathise with them in any way.
The most bizarre moments though feature Willem Defoe - a normally great actor who seems intent on committing career suicide, appearing in this. Supposedly a parody on the vanity of actors/directors, his cameo is excruciatingly embarrassing and you cringe to think he has (apparently) been reduced to this.
Is it any good?
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It was always going to be difficult to repeat the success of the original film, which was widely expected to be a disaster, but ended up surprisingly good. In a cunning ploy, they’ve reversed the situation: a film which many people expected (or at least hoped) would be good, is a disaster. Mr Bean’s Holiday utterly fails to deliver.
Much of the reason for this is that the film strays from what made the original so successful. Bean worked because it was charming, silly and fun. Whilst simplistic, it contained characters you cared about and had a basic, undemanding plot that gave rise to plenty of opportunities for humour, without ever feeling too contrived. Mr. Bean’s Holiday takes all these elements, throws them in the bin and starts from scratch.
This is essentially a road movie. This means that the characters are constantly moving on, never in one place for very long. So, you develop no feeling for the people or places you come across and neither do you see or care about the results of Bean’s actions. Since it is constantly moving, there is no sense of reality or continuity. Each scene is precisely that – a short, self-contained sequence containing a couple of gags or comedy set-pieces. Then, it’s on to the next place to repeat the pattern, with no thought for a coherent storyline.
In this race to get from one part to another, Mr Bean’s Holiday simply forgets to be funny. Sure, there are occasional bits that will make you smirk slightly, but even these are only sparsely scattered throughout the film. There’s certainly nothing to match the frequent laugh-out-loud moments of the first film, nor the consistently amusing tone . The one brief joke that might make you laugh (Bean’s fake ID) is little more than a re-hash of the stand-out moment of the first film. Other than that, laughs are few and far between.
The humour is deeply unoriginal, stealing its ideas from, well, pretty much anywhere, really. The most obvious steal is Mr Bean doing a “comedy Nazi walk”… just like John Cleese in Fawlty Towers., but there are plenty of other examples. It’s also not above stealing from itself, with many of the jokes repeated from earlier Bean TV episodes. Whilst this was also a criticism of the first film, at least that contained enough additional original and funny material to excuse it – and in many cases, the repeated jokes were funnier in the film. Here, they are worse.
Mr Bean’s Holiday also suffers from being desperately twee. The France we see has been filtered through the imagination of a British tourist, it’s not the real France. It’s full of lazy (and at times slightly distasteful) stereotypes of what we expect the French to be like. It doesn’t QUITE stoop so far as having a French man, dressed in a black and white striped jumper with onions hanging round his neck, riding a bicycle… but you wouldn’t be at all surprised if one did turn up.
The whole film is preposterous, contrived and deeply unsatisfying – ridiculous things happen simply in order to get Bean into a ludicrous situation from which the increasingly desperate writers can attempt to mine a few cheap laughs. Worse still, the same joke gets repeated in different ways throughout the film. How many times can someone lose their ticket/money/passport for goodness sake? I wouldn’t care but the “joke” isn’t even funny the first time. By the time it’s been repeated seven times, you’ll be looking for a pointy stick with which to go and introduce yourself to the writers.
Finally, the film feels padded. The original Bean worked because it ripped along at a cracking pace and never let up. Although it is actually a minute shorter than the original, this feels a lot longer because the film is very drawn out. There are long periods when it doesn’t even attempt to be funny - simply settling for long, languid shots of the pretty French countryside. Well, guess what, Mr Director, I came to watch this film to laugh, not to watch an advert for the French Tourist Board. Get rid of the padding, and essentially what you would have is a five minute sketch stretched out to nearly an hour and a half.
Oh yes, and the ending is so cheesy, you could spread it on a cracker. ‘Nuff said.
Conclusion
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Bean’s Holiday is a huge disappointment. It replaces the zany, madcap humour of the first film with bland, unfunny comedy. It ignores the essentially charming, sweet and human elements and replaces them with cardboard cut-out characters you don’t care about – and that includes Bean himself. Rowan Atkinson has said that this film is the last time he will play Bean. On this evidence, we should all start praying he means it.
Basic Information
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Mr Bean’s Holiday
2007
Director: Steve Bendelack
Certificate: PG
Running Time: approx. 89 minutes
Trivia
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The producers claim the film is an homage to French film “Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.” I’m sure they’re delighted.
© Copyright SWSt 2007
Summary: A big let-down
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