Clever visual humor makes this in most ways superior to the first Mr. Bean movie, and partly atones for star Rowan Atkinson’s lame attempt to merge Bean and James Bond in Johnny English.
Mr. Bean started out as a silent TV character before Atkinson appeared in the aptly named Bean in 1997. Here he wins a trip to France and travels from Paris to Cannes. Unlike in many American films, France here is depicted as a French-speaking country, which works out well. The language barrier plays into Bean’s natural disinclination to speak. Also, the new setting accentuates the fish-out-of-water feeling and provides a good platform for Atkinson’s Chaplinesque oddness. He’s an absurdist everyman, repelling with his facial expressions, endearing via his essential harmlessness, and solving a series of problems, largely of his own making, using his childlike sense of logic. The humor isn’t subtle, but it’s low-key. For example, the film has the same gag as one in Wild Hogs. The hero accidentally spills a drink on a laptop computer. Unlike in Wild Hogs, it was realized that having the computer catch on fire and extending the joke for twice as long would not make it funnier. Director Steve Bendelack favors long takes and long shots that allow us to watch the humor slowly unfold. A highlight is Bean’s desperate attempt to raise money via a karaoke street performance, using one song after another until he finally finds the right one.
Becoming entangled with a boy who’s lost his father (due to Bean's inadvertent mishap) and an actress, Bean becomes, sort of, a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival. Willem Dafoe amuses as a pretentious American film director. Old-fashioned yet timeless, with appeal for all ages, this was a pleasant surprise.
IMDB link
reviewed 8/28/07
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