Bumbling Brits are full of Beans
LONDON: Mr Bean is one of the most successful British cultural exports ever. Since the first Bean TV show was broadcast in 1990, its 14 half-hour programs have been sold to more than 200 TV territories worldwide and shown on more than 50 airlines. The latest Bean film, Mr Bean's Holiday, is a global smash hit, No 1 in 21 countries and top of the international box office.
And if you ask a non-Brit to describe Mr Bean, these are the words they deliver back: hapless, awkward, self-conscious, childlike, disaster-prone... and British. Resplendent in geeky tweed, the Mini-driving Mr Bean increasingly seems to be a symbol of Britishness around the globe. If Mr Bean has become an inadvertent ambassador for the British personality, it is uncomfortable for millions of us.
One of the many ironies in this story is that Rowan Atkinson says his quintessentially British creation was in part inspired by a French comic character, Monsieur Hulot, invented by French actor, director, writer and producer Jacques Tati, who released a series of films, including Monsieur Hulot's Holiday.
Mainly, however, Bean was the result of decades of the comic studying himself. As Stephen Fry once memorably said of Atkinson: "It is as if God had an extra jar of comic talent, and for a joke gave it to a nerdy, anoraked northern chemist." Atkinson himself has said he based Bean on his nine-year-old self. "The essence of Mr Bean is that he's entirely selfish and self-centered and doesn't actually acknowledge the outside world," he said. "He's a child in a man's body. Which is what most visual comedians are about: Stan Laurel, Chaplin, Benny Hill."
The second and latest film, Mr Bean's Holiday, tells the story of Mr Bean's trip to the south of France, and a large slice of its comedy reflects the stereotypical haplessness of Brits abroad. After successfully answering "oui" and "non" while ordering a hot drink, Mr Bean is complimented on his French, to which he replies: "Gracias."
Although Mr Bean's Holiday has had the most successful opening weekend in Britain so far this year, its critical and popular reception has been muted. Despite their famed ability to laugh at themselves, British people, it appears, are not as fond of Mr Bean in the way they currently love, say, Borat - there's no pop-cultural "buzz" about the latest Bean movie.
Tim Bevan, co-chair of Working Title Films and one of the producers of Mr Bean's Holiday, says the universal appeal of Bean is based on Atkinson's talent for physical comedy. Atkinson is recognised as "Bean" wherever he goes. When the film-makers tried booking the comic a room in a particularly posh French hotel during filming, reception didn't want to know until they said the magic word: Bean.
While much of the humor is that universal physical comedy adored by small children, Bevan agrees that Bean's "Britishness" is very much part of his appeal.
Mercifully for Bean-hating Brits, Atkinson has hinted that Mr Bean's trip to the south of France really is his final celluloid outing. Wherever he travels, however, it seems he will be haunted by Bean. "I suspect he has created a character he will never be able to shake off," says Bevan. Cast as international bumblers, will the rest of Britain ever live down the legacy of Bean? Bevan laughs. "Unfortunately - or fortunately - not."
The Guardian
(China Daily 05/29/2007 page19)
