Pizza & A Movie 80: "Bean"
“Tell him his is a butt I’d dearly like to kick. And next time, I will.”
1997 • PG-13 • 1h 29mins • Watch trailer • Rent it
You’re reading Pizza & A Movie—eating our way through rental classics and their backstories. Last time we covered Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Tonight we dip again into the strange bedfellows Thanksgiving genre. Once more, travel brings terror as England comes crashing to unsuspecting American shores in the form of Rowan Atkinson’s titular Bean. Let’s get into it.
Here’s the plot. We open in England’s National Gallery. Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) is a terrible security guard whom his peers wish dearly to send a continent away. They pack him off to LA’s Grierson Gallery along with Whistler’s Mother, a piece just purchased for fifty million bucks. England’s worst guard now safe-keeps America’s most valuable painting. Revenge, it seems, is a dish best served with a side of Beans.
Believing Bean to be Dr. Bean, curator David Langley (Peter MacNicol) welcomes him to Grierson with a tragic degree of trust. Worse? Bean is staying at Langley’s house for a month. Sizing up Bean quickly, Langley’s wife Pamela (Pamela Reed) and two children split. Will they spend more than a single required moment with Bean? They will not. It’s us or the Bean, they say. Left alone with the Brit, Langley soon finds his job, mental health and extremely valuable painting in dire straights. Is Bean actually evil? Can Langley save himself? And what’s the worst that could happen with tossing peanut M&Ms anyway?
What Is This Bean
“What is Mr. Bean?” was the question my brain asked over and over as I watched this. Be he a child trapped in the body of a man? A grown-up who knows exactly what he’s doing but has a schtick for getting away with it? Or—and I think this is the most likely—a devilish spirit sent to wreak havoc on the lives through which he blows like a hurricane? I think Bean’s got less in common with your worst coworker or an irritating 7-year-old. More with Shakespeare’s Caliban or Puck.
This is no man. No sir. He’s an ancient, unspeakable force from the bowels of the earth wrapped in the unassuming cloak of an Englishman. He does harm even to do good. He’s too delighted by wrongdoing. He puppets his human body with M3GAN-like movements that give creeping dread. You, like the characters in Bean, will not soon forget Mr. Bean. Though you may try.
From whence came this Bean? Since 1990, Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, its co-creators, had been making the British TV show Mr. Bean along with writer Robin Driscoll. It showcased Atkinson’s physical comedy chops via the ne'er-do-well getting into various scrapes. He never talked. He wordlessly bumbled into and out of cars, swimming pools and petty feuds. He riffed on Buster Keaton and mimes. Mr. Bean ran for fifteen episodes aired over ’90-’95, turning the character into a cultural icon.
The movie Bean got the band back together. Curtis and Driscoll returned. So, of course, did Atkinson. Even the TV show’s composer, Howard Goodall, came back to lay down notes for the movie. They’d been trying to make a movie since way back in ’91, a year into the show’s run. Look, greatness like this has to simmer for a while. Develop its subtle themes and complex notes. You can’t rush art.
A Masters of Arts Can’t Save You
Speaking of art, a funny thing happened to me a few years ago. I got six years worth of degrees in art. Yessir, got a bachelors degree and a Master’s of Arts chaser. I taught freshman and sophomore classes while I worked on the MA. The job made the degree free, so I kind of got it as a bit. “Wouldn’t it be ridiculous if I got a Master’s degree?” I thought. Well, joke’s on me. A minimal amount of research this week revealed that the painting of this movie is in fact a real thing. I had no idea. Apparently they didn’t cover Bean Art in Art History 503. If that degree wasn’t free, I’d ask for my money back.
Here’s the cold hard facts. Whistler’s Mother is the nickname for Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1, an 1871 painting by American artist James McNeil (you guessed it) Whistler. It’s an American icon sometimes termed the Victorian Mona Lisa. Or you could call the Mona Lisa an Italian Time Machine Whistler’s Mother. Anyway, it’s a real painting.
The premise clicks into place now. London’s National Gallery, Bean’s employer, plausibly would have Whistler Mother and, given that it’s a seminal American piece, would be just careless enough to put its safety in the hands of this goof. The painting is a much bigger deal to Langley than to Bean. As Americans, we love history yet have very little of it. A work a hundred and fifty years old turns the clock back half the lifetime of our country. But in England, one-five-oh is nothing. They have takeout containers in the fridge that old.
The Global Bean
For a movie about a middle-aged shenanigans-wreaking British adult child, this made a bunch of money. Whether by design or by chance, it was a worldwide movie.
Opened in Australia at number one. Then in the UK it premiered in second place behind Men in Black. Then it was off to Germany where it held the top spot, beating out The Fifth Element. It’d made $100M before it even reached the US.
Here it opened in second place behind Starship Troopers. Conspiracy theorists speculate that kids bought tickets to Bean just to sneak into the gnarly R-rated space picture, leading to lower-than-true performance for Troopers. Or maybe Starship Troopers was a bonkers ahead-of-its-time indictment of nationalism that audiences took at face value. Who’s to say?
In the end, Bean made a quarter of a billion dollars across this big blue marble. Against a budget of $18M—$2M less than last week’s comedy from a decade earlier—it was an amazing return. If it had happened now, we’d have a Bean Cinematic Universe on our hands.
Critics dinged Bean as merely a series of Mr. Bean sketches strung together by a gossamer-thin plot. Too long, they said. Roger Ebert zinged it thusly: "At an hour, Bean would have been nonstop laughs. Then they added 30 minutes of stops."
I dunno, it works for me. David’s job and marriage have been on the chopping block for most of the running time, why not his daughter too? I think you don’t get global box office numbers like this without the universality of slapstick. Everybody gets why a turkey on the melon or a peanut M&M in the open chest cavity is funny.
Bean. There was Mr. Bean, with its pitiable, bumbling Brit. This is not that. Bean. There would be Mr. Bean’s Holiday, in which travel is bittersweet. This is not that. Bean. No. There is no mister here. Bean. No holiday. Bean. Here, there is only Bean.
Bean!
Thanks for reading! If, as with Thanksgiving itself, you go into Bean with low, non-specific expectations, you’ll emerge as someone who had a pretty good time. Don’t expect balance. Poise. An artfully rendered arc. Just take it as it comes. Accept the Bean.
And hey, if you like this one, share it with a pal who would too! Don’t let ‘em go free. Give ‘em the Bean.
Notes:
Atkinson’s Bean is the cinematic opposite of Haley Joel Osment’s Cole from The Sixth Sense a few weeks ago. A dark-haired, grown-up demon to Osment’s blond-haired, child angel.
Bean gets mistaken for not one but two doctors—one of art, one of medicine. That’s Americans for you, isn’t it? Always taking the accent for learnin’.
Wikipedia describes Mr. Bean as “well-meaning yet clumsy and destructive”. Two of those things are true.
Writer Richard Curtis is also responsible for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones, Atkinson’s other show Blackadder and more.
Young Peter Capaldi at the boardroom table!
Young Sandra Oh as the publicist!
Son Kevin Langley is played by Andrew Lawrence, of the Brotherly Love Lawrences.
I’m not sure why, but this seems to have been subtitled much later as Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie.
Haven’t seen it in a few years, but I remember Mr. Bean’s Holiday being delightful.
Bean truly broke my mind.