Mr Bean's Holiday and The Namesake

Mr Bean’s Holiday – 1.5/5

Rowan Atkinson returns to one of his most famous comic creations and despite the passing of the years he shows that he’s as physically limber as ever. Unfortunately, it’s the humour muscles he’s not been exercising. This film is disappointingly unfunny. The 13 year old I took to see it rated it 1/10 – so its obviously not hitting that target audience either. If you’re a fan this will come as a disappointment, if you’re not you’re best steering well clear.

The plot, such as it is, follows Mr Bean as he wins a trip to Cannes in a church raffle. En route, he lose his luggage and passport and inadvertently abducts the son of a Russian film director en route to the Cannes film festival. Much supposedly comic mayhem ensues.

There is the odd slightly amusing moment – most of which are borrowed from better sources (Monty Python comes to mind at some points). You need to wait until Mr Bean is heading south from Paris before there is even a glimmer of a laugh. The busking routine, a running joke involving wrong mobile numbers and some classic miscommunication in a car heading south might raise a smile or two. Other bits are rather two predictable, and to put simply, just not funny enough. And the funniest moments neither belong to Mr Bean nor follow his usual humour. Willem Dafoe, as an outrageously egotistical director possibly has the funniest moments and his film shown at the festival (which Bean interrupts) is amusingly dreadful in an arty way. The screening is a definite high point, but you have to sit through quite a lot to get there

Emma de Caunes (seen recently in The Science of Sleep)is pretty and charming in a Gallic way but struggles to do much else with the thankless task of being Mr Bean’s romantic interest. And the film is all but stolen (and that’s really not saying much) by a charismatic performance from Max Baldry as the child.

This film is not lacking in heart, but at the end of the day you go to see Mr Bean for the laughs and there simply aren’t enough of them. Approach with caution.


The Namesake – 3.5/5

Director Mira Nair’s latest film follows two generations of an Indian family in America. Having miraculous survived a train crash, Ashoke Ganguli is inspired to leave India, pausing only for a brief return for an arranged marriage to Ashima. Their children, born in the States, are in many ways more western than Indian, only really starting to come to terms with their Indian heritage following the death of their father.

As such the film could be said to be about the process of adapting – to a new country, to heritage, to a spouse who’s practically a stranger, to changing circumstances. The whole is beautifully shot with a loving attention to detail – whether shots of the Taj Mahal or of a sterile, empty hotel room which communicates more about isolation and loneliness than a whole script of dialogue.

Kal Penn (whose previous cinematic high point was Harold and Kumar get the Munchies) gives a credible performance as Gogol, the son named after Ashoke’s favourite author, and proves he can handle serious drama as well as comedy. However the film belongs to the older generation. Ashoke’s and Ashima’s relationship is not the most showy you’ll ever see in the cinema, but it is beautifully shown in its gentle tenderness and restraint. The passion here is in what isn’t spoken rather than in what is and the whole is softly but powerfully moving.

There is nothing particularly original or amazing about this film, but in the unlikely figures of Ashoke and Ashanti it has perhaps the most tender, gentle and, dare I say, realistic, romance you’re likely to see on screen this year. I remember several years ago hearing an Indian on the radio commenting on the lines that we, in the West, tend to see marriage as the culmination of romance, whereas in India they would see it as the beginning. Its an interesting thought and one for which The Namesake could be produced in evidence as exhibit A.