MR. BEAN'S HOLIDAY — ** — Rowan Atkinson, Emma de Caunes, Max Baldry; with subtitles (European dialects); rated G (violence, vulgarity)
Like a lot of slapstick comedy, the English "Mr. Bean" skits are best appreciated in small doses. Which may explain why the much shorter television versions work better than the feature-length versions.
The problem comes when the creative folks have to find a story to frame and propel the title character's silly shenanigans and somehow make it all merit 90 minutes of screen time.
To be fair, "Mr. Bean's Holiday" is at least a slight improvement over its predecessor, 1997's "Bean." It's a little sweeter and less lowbrow. But once you've seen Rowan Atkinson's clueless doofus do one goofy dance or mutter incomprehensibly, this kind of thing grows tiresome in a hurry.
As the film's title promises, the character is taking a holiday from his humdrum British existence. He's just won a vacation to the French Riviera, and he's planning to enjoy some fun in the sun. Instead, he endures a series of mishaps along the way.
One of these is his accidental "kidnapping" of the young son (Max Baldry of a Cannes Film Festival juror (Karel Roden). So Bean has to find a way to reunite the boy with his father. Along the way, he also manages to enrage a pretentious American filmmaker (Willem Dafoe) and charm a French would-be actress (Emma de Caunes).
A half-hour of this nonsense would be fine. An hour is a bit much. Nearly an hour and a half is an endurance test.
And frankly, Atkinson is simply repeating many of the same gags we've seen him do for years. For example, the bit about Mr. Bean eating a "seafood platter" — which includes eating a langoustine shrimp, tail and all — is more nauseating than funny.
Considerably more amusing is the fact that the filmmakers apparently don't know that the Cannes festival takes place in May, not June.
"Mr. Bean's Holiday" is rated G but does contain some comic violence (a train station scuffle, slapstick pratfalls, vehicular mishaps and explosive mayhem) and some vulgar toilet humor (including an outhouse joke and digestive gags). Running time: 84 minutes.
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com