Starring: Rowan Atkinson, Emma de Caunes, Willem Dafoe
Director: Steve Bendelack
Category: I (English and French)
The green Mini with the bolt and padlock; a church raffle under grey skies and an English summer shower; an odd man in tweeds, fumbling with his winning ticket ... a disconcerting sense of deja vu permeates the opening scene of Mr Bean's Holiday.
Rowan Atkinson hasn't revived the character for nearly a decade - and not without reason. The pantomime parochialism Mr Bean embodies was funny the first time round, but now looks dreadfully dated.
The first 15 minutes of Mr Bean's Holiday provide ample evidence of this, with Mr Bean committing one cultural blunder after another as he reaches Paris, the transition point for his prize trip to Cannes. Obvious homages to Jacques Tati's Playtime in scenes involving Bean and Parisian architecture don't relieve the tedium.