Rotten Tomatoes: 41%
The 1990s were the era of "Preexisting Franchise: The Movie". Not only were they adapting every TV sitcom and cartoon that was even mildly popular in the 60s into a feature-length semi-parody movie, they were also cranking out movie versions of current TV shows that didn't quite call out for big-screen treatment.
Mr. Bean was, admittedly, a tremendously popular British comedy series that had attracted a large following on this side of the drink as well. I remember watching reruns on PBS as a kid, and I loved it. But when your main character is a misanthropic, mumbling, bumbling buffoon who never speaks in complete sentences and has no first name, let's just say the screenplay doesn't exactly write itself.
In the movie, Mr. Bean is a security guard at London's National Gallery whose incompetence and tendency to blow his nose loudly in front of colleagues has made him unpopular. Instead of firing him, the board of directors decides to fob him off on a Los Angeles art museum that needs a guest speaker to unveil its most valuable new acquisition, Whistler's Mother. It's a truly nonsensical setup that doesn't bother to try to justify itself in terms of plausibility or plot. But it accomplishes two things: it brings Mr. Bean to America, and it forces other characters to interact with him as if he were a normal person.
Bean's foil for most of the film is David Langley (Peter MacNicol, one of our most underrated actors), the L.A. gallery curator who has been foolish enough to vouch for "Dr." Bean's stature in the world of art scholarship. David's wife Alison (Pamela Reed) and daughter (Tricia Vessey) for some reason despise Mr. Bean before they even meet him, which seems unfair, but their reaction is retroactively justified when he arrives. Only the Langley's son (Andrew Lawrence of the Lawrence Brothers) seems to like him.
Bean makes an ass of himself in front of David's coworkers (Harris Yulin, Sandra Oh, and Pat from Heavyweights) and creeps out his family, but David keeps his faith until Bean ruins a dinner engagement by blowing up a turkey in the microwave. (In the American version, this scene is preceded by a gag borrowed from a TV episode, where Mr. Bean gets his head stuck inside the turkey, but the sequence was removed from the UK release for whatever reason. The UK version is currently appearing on Netflix as of this writing, so if you watch it, don't be surprised that the turkey gag is missing.)
Forty-five minutes into the picture, the slapstick sequence that provides the movie's main plot point finally occurs, in which Mr. Bean sneezes on Whistler's Mother, then accidentally dissolves her face while trying to clean the canvas. If you like physical comedy, this is a funny bit—especially when you see his attempt to restore the face with a ballpoint pen—but it's not much to hang a feature film on.
After some encouragement from Andy Lawrence, Bean hits upon the brilliant idea of disguising a life-sized poster of the painting as the real thing. As a twelve-year-old, I found this ridiculous resolution very satisfying, and I still do. It plays out as a well-executed slapstick heist sequence, and it's set to a weirdly uplifting music track. The poster is a call-back to a throwaway joke earlier in the movie, and it's an example of the surprisingly rich setup/payoff structure of the otherwise paper-thin plot.
When called upon to give his big speech at the unveiling, hosted by Burt Reynolds of all people, Mr. Bean breaks his ten-year mumbling streak and delivers an entire monologue in clearly audible English. We're about 70 minutes into the movie at this point, and they might as well have called it a day. Unfortunately, they decided to stick it out for the full hour and half.
To fill time and for no other possible reason, a police detective (Richard Gant) shows up at the gallery and tells David that his daughter has been in a motorcycle accident. To fill even more time, the detective is shot on the way to the hospital. Then, at the hospital, the nursing staff mistakes Mr. Bean (who has picked up a dropped stethoscope) for a surgeon—I guess anyone carrying a stethoscope will do—and rushes him into the operating theater to treat the injured detective.
Bean successfully saves the cop's life by accidentally dropping an M&M into his open wound, which is mildly funny but also very uncomfortable to watch. (It would be funnier if they hadn't already done it on Seinfeld, using a Junior Mint.) Then, in an even less inspired bit of surgical comedy, Bean also brings the Langleys' daughter out of her coma by accidentally shocking himself with a defibrillator.
Now that the day is saved, after a montage of Mr. Bean doing stupid things while Randy Newman sings "I Love L.A.", the movie finally fizzles out.
It was predictable that a Mr. Bean movie would end up being a series of slapstick set-pieces strung together by a flimsy plot, but they more or less made it work up until the denouement with the Whistler's Mother poster. If only they had quit while they were ahead. A lot of people disliked that Bean was allowed to speak so much in this movie, but I think we can allow the film that liberty. If they'd put their minds to it, they probably could have told the same story around Bean without giving him any of the dialogue, but at least he doesn't speak during the physical-comedy scenes.
Aside from Mr. Bean and David, the characters contribute nothing to the plot or humor, and that goes especially for the Langley family. Why do they hate Mr. Bean so much? I know he's annoying, but at one point Alison threatens to leave her husband if he doesn't throw the man out of the house. The dialogue suggests that their marriage is under a terrible strain, but the only apparent reason for it is the presence of Mr. Bean in the home. Couldn't they have included one scene before Bean shows up, where we learn that Alison thinks David is obsessing over his work too much or something?
Anyway, I shouldn't complain about the plot. If you're watching Bean: The Movie for the plot, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
