D: Mel Smith
S: Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNicol
There is something discomforting about watching this feature-length, big-screen
outing for Richard Curtis, Robin Driscol and Rowan Atkinson's TV character.
It's not that the film isn't funny (it has its moments), or that it's overextended
(the script does a pretty good job of working around the obvious pitfalls
involved in keeping a character on screen for an hour and a half which was
created for a television half hour), or even that it's very American in
tone (Mr. Bean has a good audience in the U.S., but he's not The Simpsons,
so there is a certain amount of caution taken with the character). It may
be something to do with the scale (which is a factor related to but synonymous
with the previous ones), and the fact that this almost non-verbal, small
character has been placed in a very verbal, large world (from a silent British
museum to big and loud California). But certainly you may come away from
the film feeling not quite as amused as you hoped you might be, or if you're
unfamiliar with the character, wondering just why it was made in the first
place.
Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson), a strange, child-like man, (introduced to us
asleep in a chair), is dispatched to California by the board of directors
of the British Art Musuem where he works (who hate him, rather inexplicably
at this point), to supervise the delivery of a famous painting. He is entrusted
to the care of MacNicol, who believes him to be a great academic, not realising
that he's just an errand boy with no comprehension of the larger political
and intellectual world around him. In the course of the film he is mistaken
for a variety of different things, including a terrorist, and manages to
destroy both the painting and MacNicol's life, but through a series of misadventures
he finally comes up trumps by stating the obvious and being himself.
It is tempting to approach this film as a variant on the idiot savant idea
used in Being There and Rain Man. There is another angle which
compares Atkinson to the great comic figures of film history such as Chaplin
or Keaton and discusses the ironic outsider. There is yet another which
links the film to the recent spate of 'dumb' movies in the U.S., including
Forrest Gump and Dumb and Dumber and simply tosses it in the
pile. Each of these approaches bears its own rewards, but none are wholly
satisfactory. There are elements of each in there, and the very fact that
the film was made at all is because someone was able to pitch it in these
terms, probably using some of these titles as reference. But Bean
is finally a shaggy dog story of a movie, amiable enough, maybe even funny,
but ultimately futile. It does not stand up to close analysis and it's just
not funny enough to really excuse it.
Mr. Bean works on television within the context set by his creators, and
his inventive, greedy, small-mindedness perfectly suits the little adventures
which are dreampt up for him, usually revolving around the foibles of British
life (and the comedy of embarassment). Taken out of this context, Mr. Bean
has nowhere to go and nothing to do. His haplessness is unsurprising because
the world in which he is placed is so unfamiliar to him. Whatever shortcuts
or twists on the everyday he could execute on the world of the TV show are
useless in the face of a plot that's bigger than himself and the real-world
responsibilities which are thrust upon him. He is also robbed of much of
his meanness, as much a source of comedy as his silliness on TV, giving
the character less ammunition with which to take on this world. Finally
you have to wonder just why anything on screen is happening at all, which
is not helpful in the final reel, where the plot spiralls off into an aside
involving MacNicol's teenage daughter as an excuse to wrap up the emotional
threads and provide further excuses for mistaken identity as Mr. Bean is
taken for a surgeon.
It's not so much a bad movie as not a movie at all, and one gets the feeling
that seeing it on video will make no appreciable difference to the experience.
This is a pity, because there is great pleasure to be had from watching
Mr. Bean in action, and there are occasional moments in the movie which
make you chuckle. But the re-play of the gag highlights over the closing
credits seems strikingly unnecessary, as if the film makers are eager to
remind you that Bean is full of funny bits, just in case you forgot
them. It merely adds to the discomfort you feel, and makes you want to get
out of the theatre quickly and get some fresh air to relieve the disorientation.
Review by Harvey O'Brien copyright
1997.