Bean (1997)
(Also known as Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie or Mr. Bean: The Movie)
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Mr. Bean has a passport.
Mr. Bean, a hopeless curator at the Royal National Gallery, London, is sent by his employers, who wish to get rid of him, to America under the pseudonym of Dr. Bean to oversee the transfer of Whistler’s Mother to a Los Angeles art gallery. Bean’s visit was set up by Los Angeles curator David Langley (Peter MacNicol), who, impressed by the National Gallery’s fabricated praise of Bean, decides to board him into his home. Bean arrives, following police detainment at the airport due to his absurd antics. He wins the affection of David’s son Kevin (Andrew Lawrence), but annoys David’s wife Alison (Pamela Reed) and daughter Jennifer (Tricia Vessey).
Bean’s arrival at the gallery worries David’s colleagues, particularly his boss George Grierson (Harris Yulin), but David promises he can handle Bean. Upon his return home with Bean, Alison departs for a relative’s home with the kids, unwilling to live with Bean. With his family gone, David decides to take Bean on a tour of the Los Angeles art galleries. However, Bean decides that he would rather go to Pacific Park. He lands in police custody again following mischief on a motion simulator ride. This prompts Lieutenant Brutus (Richard Gant), who dealt with Bean at the airport, to swear David to accountability for Bean, threatening bodily harm to the visitor if they ever cross paths again.
Following a miserable dinner with Grierson and his wife, which David had forgotten, he finally realizes that Bean is an impostor who knows nothing about art. Whistler’s Mother arrives at the gallery next morning. Bean is given a few minutes alone to study it, in an effort to keep him out of trouble. However, whilst dusting the frame, Bean sneezes on the painting and wipes it with a handkerchief, not knowing that it is covered in blue ink. Terrified, Bean takes it to the caretaker’s cupboard to get some agent by which to remove the ink. He uses lacquer thinner, which also removes a portion of the painting. Bean attempts to patch it up with an extremely unconvincing cartoon face. Upon seeing it, David is horrified and hides the painting in the metallic frame. Fearing he will lose his job and possibly face criminal proceedings for the vandalism, he and Bean drink at a bar for several hours.
During the night, Mr. Bean hatches a plan to restore the painting. He gathers a few items from the house and makes his way to the gallery. He distracts the only security guard on duty by putting laxative in his coffee and exchanges the painting for a poster version of itself. At the unveiling the next day, David is shocked to find the painting restored while Bean gives a brief, but effective, speech regarding the work. After the unveiling, Lieutenant Brutus finds David and informs him that his daughter, Jennifer, has been involved in a motorcycle accident and is in intensive care. David is given a police escort to the hospital, although Brutus stops on the way to deal with a crazed armed man.
Due to a mix-up at the hospital, Bean is mistaken for a doctor and pushed into an operating theater containing Brutus, who has been shot. While the other doctors and nurses are distracted, Bean unconventionally retrieves the bullet and saves him. Bean is again mistaken for a doctor, this time by David who pulls him in to see Jennifer, who is unconscious. Bean is unsure what to do and starts playing about with a defibrillator, managing to electrocute himself and bring Jennifer back to consciousness in the process. Still not recognizing him as Bean, David and Alison stop him and tell him that they will offer him anything. Bean then pulls down his face mask and asks if he can stay for another week.
After another week in Los Angeles with the Langleys, Bean goes home, accompanied by the original Whistler’s Mother.
Mr Bean’s Holiday (2007)
(Also known as Bean 2, Bean on Holiday and French Bean)
The film opens with Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) attending a raffle. His number is 919, the winning number. But Bean misreads it upside-down as 616. Frustrated that he lost, he throws the ticket onto a toy train. Seeing the ticket upside down reading 919, he grabs the ticket and yells out that he won in his mumbling deep voice. The prize is a holiday involving a train journey to Cannes, a Sony video camera, and €200. Following a misunderstanding involving a taxi at the Gare du Nord railway station in Paris, Bean is forced to make his way towards the Gare de Lyon to board his next train towards Cannes. As he misses the train and the next one won’t leave for another hour, he has time to sample French seafood at Le Train Bleu restaurant. He accidentally orders oysters and langoustine, which he cannot bring himself to eat. He hides the oysters into a nearby lady’s handbag, and eats the langoustine without taking off the shell in front of everybody.
Back on the platform, Bean asks a man, who happens to be a Cannes Film Festival jury member and Russian movie critic Emil Dachevsky (Karel Roden), to use his camcorder to film his walking onto the train. By the time they are done, the train is about to leave. Although Bean manages to get onto the train, the doors close before Dachevsky can get on. Dachevsky’s son, Stepan (Max Baldry) is left on board by himself. Bean attempts to befriend Stepan, with the result that the boy slaps Bean on the face. When the boy gets off at the next station, Bean gets off too and accidentally misses the train, leaving his bag on board. The train the boy’s father boarded does not stop at the station, Dachevsky holds up a sign with a mobile number, but the last two digits are obscured. Bean’s and the boys’ efforts to call the number prove fruitless. They board the next train, but since Bean has left his ticket on the station public telephone, the duo are soon forced to leave the train.
Attempts at raise money by miming to Puccini’s O mio babbino caro (sung by Rita Streich) and other music prove successful, and Bean buys them a bus ticket to Cannes. Bean loses his ticket by getting the ticket stuck on a chicken’s foot. Mr. Bean then steals a nearby bicycle and follows the chicken which has been placed onto a Peugeot 504 pickup and ends up at a chicken pen. On his return, he finds that the bicycle has been run over by a tank, but the camera is still intact. After attempting to steal a motorcycle and almost getting killed by a lorry, Bean stumbles on to the set for a TV advertisment, which he accidentally blows up, injuring the director.
Bean then tries to hitch-hike again; a yellow Mini picks him up, driven by actress Sabine (Emma de Caunes) who Bean encountered both at the commercial filming and previously, who offers him a lift to Cannes. She is on her way to the 59th Cannes Film Festival where Carson Clay’s film in which she makes her debut is going to be presented. When they stop at a service station, Bean finds Stepan in a café. Sabine agrees to take him with them.
Bean and the boy now attempt, again in vain, to call Dachevsky with Sabine’s phone. When Sabine falls asleep, Bean then drives the car himself, but he keeps falling asleep. After doing dangerous and painful things to himself to stay awake, Bean and the other two finally make it to Cannes.
When Sabine goes into a petrol station to change for the premiere, she sees a newsflash, wherein the police have made up a story about Mr. Bean kidnapping Stepan and Sabine being his accomplice. However, since she does not want to miss the premiere, she is reluctant to go to the police to clear up the “misunderstanding”. They therefore plan to get into Cannes without being identified. Stepan dresses up as Sabine’s daughter, while Mr. Bean dresses up as Sabine’s mother. They manage to get through the search and Sabine arrives at the premiere on time.
After sneaking into the premiere, Bean is disappointed to see that Sabine’s role has been (rather poorly) cut from the film (Carson Clay is seen nodding at the woman beside him at this point, implying that he cut the scene as a favor to his jealous wife), and ends up plugging in his video camera to the projector, where his video diary is unexpectedly played out. However, the strange tale it tells fits director Clay’s narration well, so that the director, Sabine, and Bean all receive standing ovations. Stepan is finally reunited with his father.
After the screening, Bean leaves the building and goes to the beach, encountering there many of the other characters. The film then ends with Bean and all the other characters of the film miming a large French musical finale, singing the famous song by Charles Trenet, “La Mer” (Beyond the Sea).