User Reviews

This is a rather interesting movie, in which Mr. Bean is forced to become a hero to save others of his own blundering mess. And it works well.

Although he doesn't say much (if anything at all) you can't help but feel for this guy. Here's a guy who is a total loser in real life, who has no friends, is very stupid and screws up even the simplest of tasks, ruining the lives of countless others for our own amusement- but he does have a good heart, which is his number one redeeming quality and makes him so lovable. He won't let others suffer from his mistakes. The performances by the other actors are also quite well done and the musical score by Howard Goodall (Mad Pianos) makes this movie very enjoyable.

Sure, the plot itself is a bit predictable and simplistic at best. But it's very well executed and makes it worth the $5 you would pay to rent it at a video store. Not an Oscar winner by any means but definitely better than most crappy movies you see on cable television.

As a kid, I love Mr. Bean. This movie directed by Mel Smith was my first glimpse of the Rowan Atkinson's character and I thought it was hilarious at the time. It was one of the first British shows, I saw as a kid, since were hard to come by, in the U.S at the time. When, I finally got hold of seeing the show, I found out that most of the skits in the movie were recycled from the TV Show such as the turkey joke from the 7th episode of Mr. Bean, 1992's 'Merry Christmas Mr. Bean'. Another joke is the Mr. Bean popping a vomit filled bag is from 1992's sixth episode 'Mr. Bean Rides Again'. Even my favorite jokes like getting bored on a fast ride is from 1993's ten episode 'Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean' & the mishap with the painting is similar to 1990's 'The Library'. I was deeply disappointed to find these out as I thought these jokes were made for the movie. So I felt bad for European fans who thought they were getting something new with this 82 minutes movie, only to find out that it just a bunch of recycled jokes from the show. Still, this movie is still watchable, and I find myself time after time, watching its crazy humor. Bean: The Movie is about Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) who works as a London museum guard. He is about to get fired. However, the big boss mistakes him for a great art critic and sends Mr. Bean to America. The Gallery entrusted him to unveil the priceless painting, Whistler's Mother to the American Art Gallery in Los Angeles. In America, Mr. Bean stays with David Langley (Peter MacNicol), the man in charge to make sure no mishaps happen during the unveiling. What we doesn't know is that the man, he's in charge of taking care of, is a complete moron. While the original choice, Steve Martin couldn't play David Langley. Peter MacNicol did an amazing job as the straight man in the gags. I love his reaction to every calamity from anger to despair. There is something comical coming from him. My favorite is David reacting to the painting. That had me dying laughing at the floor. Also, it didn't hurt to see a cameo by Burt Reynolds as General Norton as he was given some good one-liners. About Rowan, he strikes me as one of those comedians that you either completely love or completely hate, because how annoying clumsy and mean-spirited, Rowan is as Mr. Bean. The humor was pretty childish with a lot of gross slapstick humor, but nothing too bad for the children. It was rated PG-13. One of the biggest complain of the movie from fans is how Mr. Bean speaks intelligibly, albeit with apparent difficulty, as opposed to his frequent mumbling in the TV show. In my opinion, I thought it was alright. Although he has very little dialogue in the film, Mr. Bean's expressions and antics are priceless. One thing, I love about the film is the soundtrack. The film's original score was by Howard Goodall was great. The film score is utterly beautiful, and I think it's underrated from music fans! It's way too good for this film. Other non-original songs were also featured, in particular The Beatles' "Yesterday" sung by Wet Wet Wet and OMC's version of Randy Newman "I Love L.A.". The movie had some pretty good smart, in depth emotional scenes, that was surprising from a silly comedy. Get the DVD for a lot of delete scenes material that is also pretty hilarious. Bean would later get another movie in 2007, Mr Beans Holiday, which was a little truer to the original series, but this movie is far better than that movie. This movie is just flat-out fun. I think Peter MacNicol's character, David Langley sum up the film for me. I don't know what to say about Bean. He is clearly a force ten disaster area, but God help me, I like him.

I had never seen any of Rowan Atkinson's performances as Mr. Bean when this movie came out in 1997, so I knew nothing about it when I went to see it other than that it was about the zany adventures of this strange looking man on the movie poster. He strikes me as one of those comedians that you either completely love or completely hate, because his comedy is so extreme. It's not the kind of thing that you can watch and just sort of like or not really care for. It's one of those movies where it's not surprising to see people walk out in the middle while other people are just about falling out of their chairs laughing so hard. Personally, I was one of the latter.

I admit that Bean certainly deals in a very childish sort of humor. This is, by definition, slapstick comedy, and it is certainly not for all tastes. But from the movie's opening scene, which shows Bean gleefully shaving his entire face with an electric razor (including his forehead and even his tongue), you know that this is what the movie is like, so you can't really hold that against it.

The story in the film is clearly one of those that is invented for the movie and then manipulated to fit the screenplay and to work nicely into the movie. It's not that hard to realize that such a huge art gallery could be fooled for so long by someone like Mr. Bean, thinking that he's a genius, and certainly no way that he would be left alone with a $50 million painting long enough to remove it from the vault and rub paint thinner into it, but on the other hand, the rest of the comedy fits so nicely into this plot. At the very least, there are relatively realistic situations thrown into an unrealistic plot, which makes the movie enjoyable even though you don't really take it seriously.

There is a wonderful scene, for example, where Bean sneezes on the painting of Whistler's Mother, and then he tries to wipe off the spray with his handkerchief, which has been smeared with a leaky pen. So the painting gets smeared with ink, and he grabs the first can he sees off a nearby shelf, which happens to be paint thinner. It cleans the ink off nicely but then causes the paint to boil off, and then Bean frantically tries to save it by wiping it even harder, rubbing the paint off right down to the canvas. Sure, this is not the mark of an intelligent mind, but that's the point of the whole movie.

Bean is a film that relies on the fact that humans are so amused by the misfortunes of others. There's something funny about seeing someone else get into a sticky situation, and in movies like this, they do just that and things only get worse and worse. Granted, there are a million ways out of every situation that Bean gets into that would be less painful than the routes that he chooses, but if he took them there would be no movie. Consider, for example, the bathroom scene where a man walks in on Bean as he appears to be getting a little too friendly with a hot air dryer. He quickly grabs a light bulb pretending that he had been examining it, and then the man leaves and Bean drops the hot bulb to break on the ground and when he goes to run cold water over his burnt fingers the water sprays his crotch again. Total slapstick, but that's funny!

Like I said, Bean is not a movie for all tastes. But there is a place for childish humor in movies, and that place is in movies like this. It certainly can be taken too far or simply done wrong, as in the case of movies like the American Pies or the Scary Movies, etc., but Bean is a movie that knows what kind of comedy it delivers, and it knows how far to go before things just descend into vulgarity and bad taste. It's a comedy that does not pretend to be anything that it's not, and for that it should be respected. It is also, by the way, the kind of a comedy that allows for an almost innumerable amount of sequels. While I can certainly see it being vastly overdone, I would just like to say that if a couple more Bean movies were to be made, I would be among the last to complain!

AS usual this is a very funny movie of Mr Bean. I like how smartly the character was portrayed in the film like when he went to fix the portrait during the night.

The best scene is when Mr Bean gives random people the middle finger without knowing what it means.

The acting of both Rowan Atkinson and Peter McNicol was good.

My overall score 9/10

Mr.Bean has been big in TV back in 1990 in the television series debut then. Though it wasn't very funny, it certainly was entertaining and the lack of Mr.Bean's speaking made it easy for to be understood by people in various regions.

It is shown that his job is a museum guard at the (Royal) National Gallery. I suppose he used (too much) time in his hands elsewhere from the film. His employers want to get rid of him for his ignorant ways in his occupation. They send a painting known as Whistler's Mother to an art gallery in Los Angeles along with Mr.Bean there along as Dr.Bean. He meets and supposedly befriends a curator named David Langley, who offers him to his house along with his family. As usual, mayhem occurs by Mr.Bean.

It is an entertaining film, it has humorous and imaginative areas but it's not quite clever as the near eponymous man. Some non intellectual humour like Mr.Bean moving up and down on an air dryer to dry a wet spot on his trousers gives a possibly sexual impression, a man who also used the men's toilet there saw him and probably thought of that. Mr.Bean talks more in here than the TV series, the animated TV series or the 2007 film Mr.Bean's Holiday. He spoke in full detail a speech about the painting near the end of the film but hesitated a little during it.

The plot is sometimes generic. It could have been something epic yet as comical as the TV series. Going to America would have been better as an episode or a TV film. Some of the best moments like Mr.Bean restore the Whistler's Mother(as he damaged it by sneezing on it. He wiped it but caused blue ink on it from a pen spill on the tissue. He takes the painting to a room and fixes it with a chemical. It cleans the painting however soon liquidizes it or something, he wipes but then smudges the face of it entirely) by household items although he used a poster for the picture but these still are rare moments.

Bean is an enjoyable film with a handful of funny, entertaining moments. Though it only has the shadow of the TV series it was based from and it would not appeal to everyone. It is still a worthy collection for Mr.Bean fans and is also not that bad.

This film is a true delight. It might be called a comic masterpiece, only 'comic' isn't good enough. While watching (on TV), I started thinking that it was in a genre all of its own: a light-hearted horror film.

When anything can go wrong for Mr Bean (Rowan Atkinson), it will go wrong. It does so more brutally in this film, I think, than in his TV show. His American host, David Langley (Peter MacNicol), unwittingly invites Sod's Law to strike when he lets Bean do the cooking and, later, leaves him alone with the so-called 'Whistler's Mother' before the unveiling ceremony. The background music in the latter scene sounds rather like that in the famous shower scene from Hitchcock's 'Psycho': maybe no coincidence.

Bean's antics increasingly drive David to distraction. In an especially powerful scene, he sits all alone on the edge of his bed, temporarily abandoned by his wife and children, and sings Paul McCartney's 'Yesterday' straight from the heart.

Following the encounter with Whistler's painting, however, Bean comes to look amazingly resourceful, even revealing hidden depths of intelligence. A good deal of suspense builds up before that happens. This was funny but it provoked nervous laughter when I imagined how horrifying the scene would have been in real life.

'Doctor Bean', supposedly an eminent art historian, even displays virtually miraculous powers when accidentally transformed at one point into a very different kind of doctor. This scene also creates suspense, followed by relief.

The film's only serious fault, in my view, is that its ending is too happy. It struck me as rather facile and sentimental. Ironically, the TV episodes of Mr Bean sometimes end a bit brutally.

Full credit should go to Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNicol, the writers Richard Curtis, Robin Driscoll and Rowan Atkinson, and the late Mel Smith as director. The late Sir John Mills deserves special mention too, for his cameo appearance as Chairman of the National Gallery; that character,in effect, causes all the trouble. The Los Angeles gallery director,George Grierson (Harris Yulin), thinks it's called the Royal National Gallery - which may be mildly amusing.