Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie – Bean (1997)

Directed by: Mel Smith | 90 minutes | comedy | Actors: Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNicol, Pamela Reed, Harris Yulin, Burt Reynolds, John Mills, Larry Drake, Danny Goldring, Johnny Galecki, Chris Ellis, Andrew Lawrence, Peter Egan, Peter Capaldi, June Brown, Peter James

With ‘Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie’, Rowan Atkinson, with his creation Mr. Bean, the move to the silver screen. By taking this step, he runs a great risk. After all, it is questionable whether a character who is present in almost every scene and who barely communicates verbally can carry a ninety-minute film. Unfortunately, this is not the case in this film. The script is too simple and not good enough to act as a common thread. A number of skits do not fit into the whole, so that the sketch looks more like an episode from the TV series.

A lover of mr. Bean, who has seen all episodes of the TV series of the same name, will see a number of jokes again in the film. The new jokes are made more for the American movie audience, which unfortunately does not do justice to the English humor. Fortunately, the film still contains enough nice scenes, which compensate for the lack of a good story.

Rowan Atkinson, who has become well known in Europe as a comedian with, for example, the TV series ‘Black Adder’ and ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’, wanted to be Mr. Bean conquer America. The story therefore largely takes place in America and the film has a cast that consists almost exclusively of Americans. Only a small number of actors are of British descent. Each character in the story is subordinate to that of Mr. bean. The biggest ‘supporting role’ is played by Peter MacNicol (known from the TV series ‘Ally McBeal’), but he clearly has difficulty acting as a declarant. He also comes across as very unbelievable as a curator of a museum.

However, if you want to be entertained for an hour and a half by a movie that doesn’t require you to think, ‘Bean’ is a good choice. For fans of the clumsy Brit, the film is of course not to be missed, for the rest of the audience the film has enough downsides, but it is certainly not the ultimate disaster film in all respects.