Mr. Bean’s Holiday
September 15th, 2007
Dreadful. As destructive goofball Mr. Bean, Rowan Atkinson shuffles and grimaces through a ramshackle plot about a trip to France, a mistaken kidnapping, and the Cannes Film Festival. Bean’s near-silent physical comedy always worked better in short sketches, but there aren’t very many funny bits in this second movie at all. You know how sometimes the only good jokes were in the trailer? Well, my favorite trailer gag didn’t even make it into the actual movie. <makes horrid leering face>
Mr. Bean’s Holiday. Steve Bendelack, 2007. *
L’Iceberg
May 7th, 2007
Sort of like Dead Calm, but with mimes. This twee Belgian comedy tells an absurd love story about a freezer-burnt hamburger cook who goes searching for the perfect floating piece of ice. The film’s conceived by circus performers who turn each scene into a tableau for slapsticky visual gags. Endearing and intermittently brilliant, but overlong even at 84 minutes. Not to be confused with S.O.S. Eisberg, for which Leni Riefenstahl climbed actual icebergs in 1933. L’Iceberg is currently playing at Cinema Village.
L’Iceberg. Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy, 2005. ***
