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I'm not sure that I've ever liked Mr. Bean. I like Richard Curtis and I like Rowan Atkinson and I loved their collaboration that gave birth to the Blackadder franchise. Mr. Bean though.....hmmmmm.....maybe the episodes featuring the teddy bear? Then again, I'll always love that sketch set on an airplane when Bean is trying to cheer up an airsick boy but as he leans away to reach for something, the boy is discreetly sick into the paper bag that the funny man has been playing around with. As he gets up again, Mr. Bean with goofy expression, pops the bag and.....well....the rest is history! Mr. Bean is something of an institution and children adore his antics so when my 11-year-old lad got me to take him to the flicks to see "Mr. Bean's Holiday" then it was a trip down memory lane and a chance to review the movie without using the phrase "rubber-faced funny man" when referring to Rowan Atkinson or fall foul of the done-to-death clich club. And so here it is.a review of the Mr. Bean movie without that particular phrase (or strike me down with a wet kipper and a well-oiled banana skin).

Mr. Bean buys a ticket for the church roof restoration appeal (why else do churches ever have appeals?) where first prize is a holiday in the south of France, some spending money and a brand new camcorder. Winning after some confusion around the actual number, our hero embarks on a trip on the Eurostar train through France on to Cannes which just happens to be staging the Cannes Film Festival at that time. Whilst engaging a passenger to film him getting on the train, the electric doors shut leaving the panic-stricken passenger on the outside looking in as the train pulls away from the station with his son clambering at the train window appealing for advice as to what to do next. Mr. Bean realising that he has split up the two of them, notes the stranded man's advice for his son to get off at the next station but the follow up train passes straight through without stopping although dad does communicate a note that has a Cannes telephone number on it whilst splayed across a train window. It becomes Mr. Bean's mission to re-unite the two in what turns into an archetypal road movie full of misadventures and pratfalls.

I guess I expected the Mr. Bean movie to be a series of mini-sketches strung together into a longer effort and, to an extent, this is what the movie is. The presence of a camcorder is an opportunity for a barrage of Atkinson gurning at the self-pointing lens and, whilst funny

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