Steve Bendelack
Mr. Bean's Holiday

LA RECENSIONE

Anonymous Monday of a summery April. House is burning, no air conditioner. In these cases, you are saved by diving into the sea fully dressed, with the iPod in your ears, perhaps accompanied by three voluptuous young ladies longing for affection, or by the cinema. The world's grudge against almost-seventeen-year-olds leads me to seriously consider only one of these options; I call Ernesto, and we dive into the air-conditioned local theater; Mr. Bean is waiting for us.

Upon leaving the cinema, a healthy reflection on inertia begins. It's hard to understand how something that has enormous success must necessarily have a sequel, and not remain what it was. It's hard to understand how a delightful series of typically "British" silly gags, created and impersonated by a talent for dissimulation like Rowan Atkinson, must necessarily be turned into a film version, inevitably altered but still retaining the ability to make you return home a bit more cheerful, and how even the film version must be cloned, extended and corrected, in order to completely kill any humorous vein and stimulate the desire to leave the theater halfway through the screening, if not sooner.

The fact is that 'Mr. Bean's Holiday' has nothing enjoyable.

The very banal plot is built precisely to incorporate the funny movements of Mr. Bean, but it seems that Bendelack forgot about this choice, inserting romantic film-like shots, complementary characters that steal the scene from the protagonist, apocalyptically delayed timing, annoying pop-punk tunes drowning out the almost entirely vanished little choruses, a classic trademark of the black-and-white skits. All this for only one noteworthy gag in the entire film.

It's sad to think that this cursed principle of inertia has taken 5 euros and fifty cents from each of two young almost-seventeen-year-olds... It means the idea worked, it means marketing makes sense, it means we are really taken for a ride big time.

...but at least we were cool.