Bean (1997) Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNicol, John Mills, Pamela Reed Movie Review

Bean (1997)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Rowan Atkinson in Bean (1997)

The Whistling Bean

When Lord Walton (Peter Egan), the director of the British Royal National Gallery wishes to fire the bungling Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) his superior, The Chairman (John Mills) won't allow it. So instead Lord Walton plans to get rid of Bean by sending him to America with a rare painting with George Grierson (Harris Yulin) and his staff believing Bean must be a great Doctor of art. Of course things don't go well when Mr. Bean arrives in America.

I have mentioned before that I never really understood what was so funny about the rubber faced antics of Rowan Atkinson as the bungling Mr. Bean and could only stomach him in small doses. As such I will tell you now not to expect an overly positive review of "Bean" the first movie but admittedly not the savaging that I would probably have written of this if I was reviewing movies back in 1997.

So let me tackle the obvious and I can only take the antics of Mr. Bean in small doses so when the movie starts with him shaving, the comedy of him shaving his entire face is amusing. But by the time we had the next gag with Mr. Bean I was already tired of his antics. And sadly there was still another 84 minutes to go and I was not expecting to be able to make it all the way to the end.

But here is what saves "Bean" or makes it at least a little watchable for me is that one heck of a decent American cast has been assembled around Rowan Atkinson and it is the humour of Peter MacNicol trying to deal with Mr. Bean which is more entertaining. If there wasn't such a strong list of cameos I would have simply found "Bean" unbearable.

What this all boils down to is that "Bean" wasn't for me and whilst the strong supporting cast makes it bearable the comedy of Rowan Atkinson bungling from one scene to another is not that funny.

Tags: British TV Shows & Their Movies


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