BEAN
Rowan Atkinson who has the title role in BEAN was supposed to have been an electrical engineer but somewhere along the way he had more of the slapstick comedian in him, the silent stars type, and in 1970 made his debut as a performer. Despite being around since then, and despite being famous in England as well as having been in the films FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, THE TALL GUY and THE WITCHES, he is not as well-known in the States except for cable TV. BEAN will change all that.
Bean is silent. The only sounds to come out of his mouth are weird grunts. The other actors, plagued by BEAN, do not remain silent. How could they? Bean's job as a guard in an art gallery requires that he just sit in a chair. Unfortunately, that is too much of a chore so the alternative is to fire him. However, Bean has a friend, a benefactor to the museum, whom the Board of Directors would not want to offend. One of the board members conceives the idea of getting rid of bean, at least for a while, by commissioning him to deliver a $50 million painting (Whistler's Mother) to a new gallery in the United States. Further, he is passed off as an art expert. Needless to add, the painting does not quite make it to its owner in its original.
Atkinson pulls out all the comic stops in BEAN. Falling off a chair in the art gallery, making himself in a unique manner some real instant coffee for breakfast as he is late to work, and shaving with an electric razor his whole face including his tongue are hysterically funny. A most difficult trick is to sustain that kind of humor throughout an entire film. At that, the film is not entirely successful despite other antics that pop up throughout the movie. However, it is still great fun.
Others in the cast include the art historian of the U.S. gallery (Peter MacNichol), his wife (Pamela Reed) and their daughter (Tricia Vessey) and son (Andrew J Lawrence). It is in their home that BEAN stays during his Los Angeles visit. Not since THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER was a family so harassed and made furious by their guest who was only trying to help.
A very funny movie.
Directed by Mel Smith
Written by Richard Curtis and Robin Driscoll
3 Bytes
4 bytes = Superb 3 bytes = Too good to miss 2 bytes = Average 1 byte = Save your money
Copyright 1997 Ben Hoffman
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews