Mr Bean's Holiday Review

Returning to the big screen after a ten-year hiatus for what Rowan Atkinson has claimed will be his farewell appearance, hapless klutz Mr Bean signs off with a mishap-laden gallivant across the channel that is sure to be warmly welcomed by his legion of fans. If you've never quite seen the appeal of this smirking, near-silent idiot, however, you're unlikely to be converted by Steve Bendelack's film, a grab-bag of sketches of varying quality that amounts to an awful lot of not very much.

After a church raffle sees Atkinson's Mini-driving bachelor win a trip to the French Riviera and a camcorder to record it on, it's barely a matter of minutes before Bean finds himself stranded in the French countryside reluctantly minding the son of a Russian director on his way to the Cannes Film Festival. Further mishaps ensue for this unlikely duo as they pennilessly and cluelessly try to make it to the premiere on time.

Switching between elegant sun-drenched visuals and Bean's off-the-cuff shaky-cam, Bendelack ambitiously puts film-making itself at the heart of a comedy whose very title is a play on Jacques Tati's "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday". As rewarding as such in-jokes are for movie buffs, though, it's up to Atkinson to shoulder a film that lives or dies on the strength of his physical buffoonery. And while his encounters with Paris traffic, a runaway chicken and a platter of raw seafood have a simplicity that Buster Keaton would be proud of, the strain of carrying a feature-length movie ultimately proves too great for a character best swallowed in small doses.