The Prague Post
March 15th, 2010
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    star Gift Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Wildly unfunny

Atkinson's Holiday is hard work
Cinema Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
March 28th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Landscape with cretin. Atkinson doing what he does worst.
Rowan Atkinson has convinced me to reconsider my opposition to corporal punishment in schools, as surely some sadistic headmistress or -master somewhere could have saved us all from the Mr. Bean franchise by soundly beating Atkinson with a good cane or ruler.
The world can be neatly divided into two groups of people: those who find Atkinson’s class-clownery amusing and those of us who, when forced to watch his antics, are left wondering what hideous crimes we committed in a past life. Why, we ask ourselves, is an endless mime of retardation uproarious?
Mr. Bean's Holiday

Directed by Steve Bendelack
With Rowan Atkinson, Willem Dafoe, Karel Roden, Max Baldry, Emma de Caunes and Jean Rochefort

As a comedic actor, Atkinson possesses some verbal dexterity which made his various Black Adder outings enjoyable. But as the mumbling, monosyllabic Mr. Bean, he resorts to his rumored gifts as a physical comedian, a talent consisting primarily of a bag of tics and the appropriated strutting from Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks.” Mr. Bean’s Holiday is Atkinson’s latest pratfall from grace.
The title immediately alerts one to another of Atkinson’s inspirations, as he has long accused poor Jacques Tati as being an influence on him. And so Mr. Bean’s Holiday is a lolling neck’s nod to Tati’s droll soufflé Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. This slanderous homage to a master mime and filmmaker is only the tip of this narcissistic pile.
Winning a church raffle trip to Cannes, Mr. Bean sets out from rain-soaked London for the palmy beaches of the South of France. Naturally, getting from point A to point B without causing havoc is beyond the egregious boy-man’s capabilities. He disrupts Paris traffic (yes, Hulot again), makes a dog’s tea out of a fine restaurant’s lunch, and separates a father from his son on the express train to Cannes.
The latter incident allows Atkinson and his abettors to reference Chaplin’s great The Kid, as he attempts to reunite the family he so stupidly divided (though Chaplin, of course, never seemed like a potential child molester). This will take Bean on even more effortful adventures, including crashing onto a film set, where Atkinson can again revel in many of his own pet stunts. It all ends in song outside the Cannes Film Festival.
This dispiriting cavalcade of nonsense is made worse by a camcorder in Bean’s mitts, which allows Atkinson to exult in his brand of infantilism, providing continuous close-ups of his shameless, merciless mugging. You feel mugged.
The half-priced ham of Atkinson aside, Mr. Bean’s Holiday has somehow drafted some excellent actors into a supporting cast of enablers. Willem Dafoe pops up as an egoistic filmmaker, Carson Clay, who is screening his latest epic of self-regard at Cannes. Ironically, Clay’s small film, which we are invited to find hilariously pretentious, is far more interesting than the idiocy it’s embedded in.
As Clay’s leading lady, Emma de Caunes is as charming as she’s been in Michel Gondry’s fascinating failure, The Science of Sleep, and the bizarre little musical Short Order. De Caunes alone lights up the screen on this dreary slapstick. The film’s list of victims also includes Karel Roden and Jean Rochefort.
Once the anger from having been badgered to smile for nearly two hours has subsided, one is left feeling some sympathy for Atkinson and his delusions of adequacy. He is welcome to reference Tati, Chaplin, Stan Laurel and Harold Lloyd as much as he likes, but he will never be admitted into their ranks. For all the great clowns have a humanity about them, a quality that’s difficult to embody when one is blissfully self-mired in a vaudeville sketch on autism.
Perhaps in a past life I was one of those sophisticated Jacobeans who would amuse themselves by going along to Bedlam to taunt the mad with sticks. If so, Mr. Bean’s Holiday should, I hope, serve as the ultimate penance for my misdeeds.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (28/03/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.