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| MR. BEAN'S HOLIDAY |
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| Actors: Rowan Atkinson, Emma de Caunes, Willem Dafoe, Jean Rochefort, Karel Roden |
| Director: Steve Bendelack |
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Studio: Universal Studios |
| DVD release: 27 November 2007 |
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Runtime: 90 minutes (1 disc) |
| Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC |
| DVD features: Subtitled, Dubbed, Dolby AC-3 Surround Sound, Deleted scenes, "French Beans," "Beans in Cannes," "The Human Bean" |
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Rowan Atkinson has been charming us with his Mr. Bean character since the late '80s. It's a familiar character and one that touches us perhaps because we see a bit of ourselves in Bean - or perhaps we fear that others see some Bean in us. He's awkward in most any situation he encounters and usually chooses the wrong way to resolve the conflicts he ends up in.
Mr. Bean's Holiday finds our hero winning a holiday (vacation, to those in America) and a camcorder in a church raffle. This takes him from rainy London to France. His goal is to get to the beach in Cannes, but as in all road movies, forces work against him to turn a quick journey into a long trial. He gets in the wrong cab, misses trains, loses his passport and currency, causes others to miss their trains, inadvertently adopts a young boy, befriends a beautiful young actress,
and saves a pretentious film at a film festival. In the end, of
course, everybody loves Bean.
Atkinson's Bean is nearly mute in most of his features, and Holiday finds him a stranger in a strange land, without a common language. Mostly he utters 'oui', 'non' and 'gracias' where he feels it may fit in. It's almost as if we are viewing a silent film. We have audio, but the performance recalls performances from the dawn of cinema, when the technology for audio was provided by a Wurlitzer organ in the theater playing the film.
Mr. Bean's Holiday is a nice, fun film that can be enjoyed with the whole family. My son, who usually holds no truck with live-action film, has even consented to view this one after seeing some of the outtakes. That's powerful stuff.
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