BEAN (1997)
A movie review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1997 Chuck's Movie Reviews
Bean (1997) ** out of ***** - Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNichol, Burt Reynolds, Harris Yulin, Pamela Reed, Larry Drake. Written by: Richard Curtis and Robin Driscoll. Directed by: Mel Smith. Running Time: 90 minutes.
You would think that this film's dismal failure would be due to American filmmakers getting hold of a brilliant British comedy and "Americanizing" it. You'd be wrong, since full blame can be placed on the very folks who wrote and created the series: Rowan Atkinson, Robin Driscoll, and Richard Curtis. Should you ever happen to meet those chaps, do me a favor. Grab them by the hair and yell really loudly in their ear, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?! HAVE YOU EVER HEARD THE PHRASE 'IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT'?!" Then walk away.
The film concerns Mr. Bean (Atkinson) and his visit to America while escorting the painting of "Whistler's Mother" to an American buyer (played by Burt Reynolds, in the type of bit part that his success in "Boogie NIghts" should hopefully do away with). Now how or why Mr. Bean is sent on this trip makes no sense, and I can't even describe how the film explains it. The point is that Mr. Bean comes to America and causes wacky trouble.
Problems problems problems, where to begin? First, the score music from the TV show has been completely replaced by score that is either at times one note away from the score from "Beetlejuice" or one note away from the score from "Rob Roy". Then, the song choices are totally uninspired. "Good Vibrations"? "I Love L.A."? Wow, don't put any thought into that guys. Also, Bean makes WAY too much noise in the film. The character doesn't speak much, but in the series you really only heard the laughter of the audience, and maybe the occasional murmur from Mr. Bean. Each episode was like a Chaplin silent movie. In the film, Bean is constantly moaning, grunting, whining, etc. It's annoying, and just plain wrong for the character. The main problem though is that it's just not funny. With each episode of the series there would be dozens of really great laughs crammed into less than 30 minutes. Multiply that running time by three however, and the laughs steadily decrease. They even have the gaul to REPEAT jokes from the series. Sad, and creatively lazy.
As a series, "Mr. Bean" only ran for about 13 episodes or so. Why on earth did Atkinson and the gang decide it was time to completely rework everything? 13 half-hour episodes certainly hadn't exhausted all possible situations. All I can say positively for the film at this point is that it's almost appropriate for all ages, if it wasn't for a couple of scenes where it appears as though Mr. Bean is having sex with things. And even that isn't a very positive statement. Please guys, go back to England and go back to television so you'll make me laugh again. [PG-13]
-- Chuck Dowling --
Visit Chuck's Movie Reviews at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ Over 1,600 movies rated and/or reviewed! Movie news, film related links, and reader's reviews.
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