Over the duration of this film, stretchy-faced simpleton Mr. Bean steals several items, smacks a security guard in the face and causes at least one fatality. But it’s easier to accept that the once loveable man-child is now a Natural Bean Killer than that he’s no longer funny. Rowan Atkinson mugs and gibbers away as usual as our hero crosses France on a mission to get to the beach, but where on TV he used to wring ten minutes’ worth of slapstick out of a single set, this sequel’s gag rate is absymally low.
It’s inspired by Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, but where Jacques Tati had the guts to bring beautifully calibrated silent comedy into the sound age, this is padded with lazy dialogue, a boring plot and Willem Dafoe.
