Review of Mr. Bean's Holiday

I award a ten to any film which is extremely good at what it does, and Rowan Atkinson's comedic brilliance succeeds here on every level. The wry dark humor of Black Adder and even his more broad efforts in the BBC series The Thin Blue Line have been reigned in, and what we have left is something which will please every generation of moviegoer, young and old alike. One sketch leads to another and yet there is a real story here comprising a beginning, middle and one of those old-fashioned endings in which the whole happy cast sings while looking into the camera lens. Atkinson is better than Chaplin at character improvisations--what an amazingly funny, expressive face from this Oxford-educated structural engineer, of all things! The film is brilliantly cast and his two principal co-stars are both headed for bigger things: Emma de Caunes is wholesomely sexy with one of the loveliest new faces to grace the screen in a long time, while Bean's foil, the boy on the train, is played to great effect by Preston Nyman, a young stand-up comic who is conspicuously at ease before the lens. This was my introduction to the Mr. Bean franchise, and I'm delighted with what I know lies in store for me.