Happy Birthday Mr Bean

The thing is, the first film if you were to watch it on its own, it is quite enjoyable and good in its own right, but it’s not true to the series. It’s a shame they chose to cut out a lot of scenes such as Mr Bean driving through Harrods. They explained on the VHS release which had the cut scenes at the end that it was almost 20 minutes into the film before he went to America, which became about 10 minutes after editing. Worth nothing that Mel Smith directed this film.

EDIT: Said feature extra available here:



The second film whilst not as laugh out loud funny, is a bit more gentler, truer to the character and series.

I’m quite looking forward to the documentary tomorrow, Rowan Atkinson doesn’t do many interviews, so I’m interested what he, Curtis and Driscoll have to say.

Said feature made its way to the DVD too. However I suspect they thought they needed an introduction as to why Bean went to America in the first place, but that being said, that entire Harrods skit was just the sort of thing Bean would do, in fact everything he did (that was used in the movie) and including the Harrods skit right up until he's arrested for the second time (after fiddling with the virtual ride) was Bean. After that? Not quite so much and I think that's where it fell down for me. Enjoyable on its own but yes, it wasn't the TV show.

Worth noting the film is on tomorrow afternoon too. Suspect they'll be a lot of promotion for the series being on BritBox too.

I think the problem with the film is 90 minutes of Bean is a huge jump from the 10 minute sketches of the TV series, and many of the jokes had been nicked from the TV series! It definetely seemed to have been knocked up at the time to satisfy American Bean fans rather than (already well established) British fans

Having said that it is still perfectly servicable for what it is, I must have watched it at least 20 times now (ITV must have shown it about 200 times!), and it made about ten times the budget at the box office so everyone goes home happy!

I never noticed how amazingly often they use the DU DE DAR DAR DE DA DA DA musical bed in the Bean film!

Correct

How amazingly nice I've only just seen this thread 2 minutes before the programme starting! One of my earliest ITV memories is of Mr Bean.

Why have we not banished pan&Scan yet on videotape material? One of the most ridiculous things for archive material I've heard of. Might have been fine to an extent in the days of "this film has been formatted to fit your TV" but my God, this is awful. I'm sure there are people who think it went out originally looking like that.

See point just proved on the broadcast. The gag of Bean nicking the other bloke's paper at the bottom of the frame is non existant and you only hear it. Initially you could see and hear it.

Cropping is a shame but this is just joyous TV.

Am I right in thinking the theme and possibly titles were retrospectively added to the first episode?

Mr Bean's Holiday is the stronger of the two movies because the jokes are mostly original.

Is there any reason why they're using the film "Back Soon" bumpers when this is a TV show?

Yes, the original episode started like this: