Word: beaned
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...course, having a clearly defined plot which plods from point A to point B, also something Mr. Bean didn't have to deal with in the TV show, tones down a lot of Atkinson's lunacy by making it all very predictable. The movie elicits a constant and varied selection of groans and muffled supplications from the audience as they realize the ridiculousness bearing down on Bean three or four steps ahead of the actual on-screen action...
...Making Bean's unwitting victims actual characters--as opposed to leaving them unwitting and unexplored as per the show--also turns out to be a mistake. The movie makes viewers obliged to feel sorry for them, a surefire way to kill the fun. Bean's curator host is incredibly whiny and annoying, and quite undeserving of all the screen time he soaks up. MacNicol, whom one wants to strangle, is straight out of the generic fretting and put-upon straightman mold, and his presence truly cheapens Atkinson's admirable efforts...
...form and style of Bean are remarkably generic and trite. However, Atkinson's antics, though truncated, make it barely watchable. When he is by himself and allowed to perform up to his usual levels, the audience can almost forgive the staleness of his vehicle. Scenes including those wherein he monkeys in front of mirrors, goes on secret undercover missions of silliness and gets himself arrested in an airport simply for being Beanish are the film's only redeeming moments. Unfortunately, the contrived sappiness of the plot takes what should have been divinely inspired idiocy and makes it merely dumb...
...phrases unavoidably spring up when listening to the Bean soundtrack: genre-defying incoherence, void of musical focus, gratuitous marketing and a waste of raw materials. In addition to providing another unnecessary compilation of unrelated tunes for the consumer public, the inexplicable, unnecessary nature and order of Bean: The Album represents every shred of numbing dumbness that bleeds throughout the movie. But there is an unavoidable counterpart to this misdirected stupidity that becomes apparent with each silly song; the tracks are connected by an inane disconnectedness reminiscent of the classic, original Mr. Bean character that could blossom into a smirch...
Ambivalence is never a completely favorable trait in the musical world, especially for an inherently questionable soundtrack, but it somehow keeps Bean from the movie music graveyard. The surf-rock doo-wop of the Beach Boys' "I Get Around" and the 80s staple "Walking on Sunshine" from Katrina and the Waves lend a familiar sound to a bunch of otherwide deservedly unknown songs. Don't think that unpopularity leaves other tracks necessarily disappointing. "I Love L.A." by the revivors of this past summer's Latin element, O.M.C., has a catchy groove, Boyzone's "Picture of You" frolicks in generic...