Mr. Bean’s Holiday needs to be reviewed within a certain context that, seemingly, most reviewers ignore. That context is, of course, that people that will want to see Mr. Bean’s Holiday will be Mr. Bean fans and will want and love the style of comedy that Rowan Atkinson’s character brings. Reviewing the film under any other pretext than that simply lets down the viewers of the film. Mr. Bean’s Holiday does not attempt to be something else, it doesn’t try to alter the vision of Mr. Bean, and it doesn’t try many new things. That, dear friends, is precisely why the film works. If Mr. Bean is not your cup of tea, you’re not going to enjoy this film.
Within that context, then, I give you my review for Mr. Bean’s Holiday, the 2007 incarnation of Rowan Atkinson’s benchmark character. The film marks a return, of sorts, for Atkinson after his film Johnny English was panned to death. Atkinson had been featured, memorably, in Love Actually in a hilarious turn and was in an overlooked 2005 film entitled Keeping Mum, but he essentially stayed out of the type of goofball comedy lead roles that he made his name on. 2007 seemed like the right time for Mr. Bean to make his way back for Atkinson and, with the help of director Steve Bendelack, Atkinson seems determined to make a splash.
Cinema needs a Mr. Bean, in my opinion, to offset the generally weak slapstick offerings we are akin to. It’s no secret that critics and Hollywood-types are generally not too kind to family-friendly comic offerings, choosing to pan most films that fill the genre. Comedy, as a whole, is often brow-beaten as a genre (when was the last time a pure comedy won an Oscar for Best Picture?) and it’s awfully hard to please everyone when it comes to humour. Atkinson’s Mr. Bean has been doubling people over for quite some time, however, and certain circles of people are very familiar with Mr. Bean’s antics and appreciate the character for what he brings. My parents, for example, are huge Mr. Bean fans and enjoyed this film very much because it gave them exactly what they wanted: good natured laughs.
So, in today’s day and age in which a film needs to eclipse itself in order to be considered good and in which comedy is an uphill battle unless you’re Seth Rogan, Mr. Bean’s Holiday certainly faces a significant challenge in order to win over a public that is most likely watching this film with arms-crossed. Luckily, Atkinson’s endearing Mr. Bean character has a lot to work with in this small little film and he works with it with masterful charm and innocence, all the while without taking up the spotlight or making an effort to steal each scene. The humour here is organic, built from the ground up, and set mostly on gags that are obvious but immensely pleasing. There are no real surprises here and, I’d argue, there shouldn’t be. That’s not to say that the film plays it safe, though. Oh no.
Mr. Bean’s Holiday follows our beloved Mr. Bean as he wins a trip to Cannes. He brings along his camcorder, which is used to shoot some of the scenes in the film much like some of the art house films this film lampoons. Naturally, our good friend Bean struggles with the language barrier in France. This leads to two interesting develops, one of which is related to the plot and the other is related to the overall style of the film. First, Bean can’t understand a word of what most people are saying to him, which inevitably leads to some very funny moments. Second, and more interestingly, it leads to 90% of the dialogue in the film being subtitled. A very interesting move for a Mr. Bean film and, as the closing scenes highlight, an interesting treat when it comes to setting a tone.
There are several nice comic setups here that are revisions on old favourites, including a seafood gag with a huge platter in a ritzy French restaurant and a classic Mr. Bean dancing for money gag that will surely please Atkinson’s fans. Those gags, coupled with new ones, highlight what is a very good natured and well done film. It is significantly better than Bean, which sought to take Mr. Bean so far out of his element and bring in new stuff. This film relies on more of a reminiscence of old Mr. Bean gags with an infusion of a solid underscoring point and, better still, a very slight satire of pretentious French films (he wins a trip to Cannes, remember).
The film knows what it is, that’s for sure. Mr. Bean’s Holiday is so self-aware that it features Willem Dafoe, of all people, as a pretentious auteur that’s trying to promote a film at Cannes using all of the tricks that the *real* film has been using all along. It’s quite genius for a Mr. Bean film, quite frankly, and the point is driven home with a delicious and oddly touching climax in which Mr. Bean’s antics throughout the film we just saw are imposed on a big screen over Dafoe’s pretentious and hilariously fitting dialogue. We are even treated to a short and not overdone moment in which Mr. Bean is imagined in a family unit, with a love interest (yes, a REAL love interest) named Sabine (Emma de Caunes).
You will doubtlessly read reviews that will pan the living daylights out of Mr. Bean’s Holiday and, for those critics, rightly so. In my opinion, however, Atkinson’s modern comic pantomime is a delicious framework with which to set up a funny critique of pretentious art house films. It’s a genuine molding of art forms, here, and the polarizing reviews are indicative of just what the film intended. Mr. Bean is either a genius or he’s not. The film, in my opinion, is a very funny and surprisingly good take on film, framed with an artform from Atkinson that is underplayed in today’s comic Hollywood. If you take your comedy seriously, skip it. If you’d like some good family laughs and a rather hilarious send-up of Cannes, see it.
7/10
