DVD Review:
Mr. Bean's Holiday
Movie
I was always a big fan of Mr. Bean the television show. I could sit here and talk about my favorite episodes like where Mr. Bean went to church and tried to open a candy and was making tons of noise. Or when he went out on his birthday to a restaurant to buy something special for himself, and ended up getting steak tartar. Then he had to get rid of the steak so he ends up putting pieces of it in everything including the waiter’s pants and the sugar bowl. When the first Mr. Bean movie came out it was ok, but really was missing the magic of the BBC show. So it was with great hope that I sat down to watch Mr. Bean’s Holiday. Mr. Bean enters a church raffle and wins a trip to France. He also wins a camcorder. Just before catching his train he asks Emil a judge at the Cannes Film festival to use his camcorder to record him getting on the train. But he ends up causing Emil not to be able to board the train. Emil’s son Stepan is left on the train without his dad. Since Bean is heading to Cannes he and Stepan team up. Bean records pretty much the whole movie and you get to see through his camcorder. There were some classic bean moments but, not enough of them. I felt like if I was not being asked to review this movie that I would probably have turned it off before the end. It’s not that its really bad, but I just wished the movie was a little more grounded in reality. Before I talked about Bean eating Steak Tartar, well there is a scene in this movie that is pretty much the same skit only with seafood. I laughed but, there were very few times that it was laugh out loud funny. Rowan Atkinson has been quoted as saying this would be the last story involving the character “Mr. Bean” and I would have to say that’s probably a good thing. It’s too bad that Mr. Bean could not have gone out on a high note.
5 out of 10
Video
The transfer in this film is not bad. It is about what I would expect. The colours are nice and vibrant in all of the scenes involving the south of France. There is some really nice scenery in this film and the transfer does an adequate job of showing them off.
7 out of 10
Audio
Since this is a comedy involving Mr. Bean I was not expecting any amazing surround sound effects. There are a lot of scenes in this movie where there is barley any sound at all. But none of this affects the movie and in a lot of instances it adds to the Mr. Bean persona.
7 out of 10
Extras
This is a single disc release so there is not much in the way of extras. There are some deleted scenes and a making of. There is a feature about how the other actors in the film talk about how Rowan Atkinson gets into the character. But there is not a lot I can recommend here, most of it is pretty boring.
5 out of 10
Overall
I would only recommend this movie to the diehard Mr. Bean fans. Anyone else can give it a rental I suppose. But I really felt let down by this movie. I was expecting Mr. Bean brilliance, but all I got was a rehash of some older episodes in a different setting.
Recommended to only the die hard Mr. Bean fan. For everyone else I would not even recommend renting it.