Date:22/04/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/04/22/stories/2007042206080200.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Just about worth a watch

Mr. Bean's Holiday (English)

Director: Steve Bendelack

Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Willem Dafoe, Max Baldry, Emma de Caunes

Perhaps, Rowan Atkinson has finally realised it. Perhaps, that is why he's reported to have called "Mr. Bean's Holiday" the last Bean movie. Whatever one's feelings about the Bean of the small screen, it is quite undeniable that Britain's most popular klutz just doesn't belong on the big screen.

We saw it happen in 1997, when Mel Smith's "Bean" tried to give Rowan Atkinson's quintessentially purposeless character a sense of a larger picture. With "Mr. Bean's Holiday" thankfully, writers Robin Driscoll and Simon McBurney return to the familiar collection of gags woven together by rather loose plot-threads. Bean wins a holiday to Cannes, inadvertently separates a boy from his Cannes-jury-member father, loses all his money and passport, and meets a small-time actress before everything rounds off to a happy end.

The return to his element helps Atkinson bring some of the warmth and joy of the original TV series back into this film. However, a transfer to the big screen makes one realise just how much time stretches, as the extended framework has the film attempting long, winded gags that often lack the powerful conclusion needed to properly round them off. The fact that most of the gags come from a more classic era (read done to death), one that viewers here will probably best associate with the Fred Quimby episodes of "Tom and Jerry", just makes things that much worse.

Still, the kids won't probably feel as dissatisfied as the adults.

Rakesh Mehar