The Curse of Mr. Bean (thoughts)

[By Jove its holmes]

Well, The Curse of Mr. Bean:

Do you think Bean ever goes after those boys who caused him to fall from the diving board?

Likewise, I wish i could be a fly on the wall when the parents of the little girl in the yellow swimsuit realise that she’s got a pair of men’s swim trunks with her as well as her snorkel.

I wonder if the women’s swimming class that Bean flashes are traumatised for long?

I have a family photo from that era taken at my local swimming centre of the beginners swimmers class and EVERY ONE of the small girls is wearing some variation of the swimsuit the little girl in The Curse of Mr Bean wore.

And of course even if eighties culture and fashion hadn’t “hung over” into the early nineties, since there was no year zero, 1990 is part of the previous decade.

Mr. Bean thwarted by a kindergartner:

I occasionally think about what fictional characters do after the story is over, and how their lives might continue. However, one can overthink such things, particularly in the area of slapstick where IRL such antics would often result in arrest, injury or death.

I mean, in one Mr Bean outing he literally headbutts the Queen. Tell me that wouldn’t have serious consequences.

Topic

[Warbodog]

‘Curse’ and ‘Goes to Town’ were the only Bean we had on video (blue video; my friend had the red video). Watched it plenty. Favourite bit was probably when he bides his time waiting in the shadows for someone to use the car park ticket machine, then his lights turn on like evil eyes, engine roars like a monster and he goes for it. I liked mean Bean.

[Dave]

I liked Mr Bean a lot when I was younger, but it’s only when rewatching it as an adult with my own kids that I’ve realised how utterly brilliantly performed and cleverly conceived they are.

In their day there was a bit of sniffiness around them once they got really popular, like they were secretly crap or somehow unworthy of praise or something, but away from all that you can see just how perfect they are, especially the earliest episodes.

[By Jove its holmes]

[bloodteller]

I had Curse Of Mr Bean on VHS as a kid, it was the blue one I think? As I remember, also available were “the blood coloured one” and the “bluey, greeney, paddling pool sort of color”…it was so weird hearing him talk at length in that intro. Something that stood out to me, even as a kid, is the episode when he goes to the cinema to see a movie, which inexplicably lasts all of 5 minutes. I mean yes, the episode couldn’t have gone on for an hour and a half, but surely it would make sense to have some kind of crossfade to show time passing, rather than there being a 5-minute movie

[Warbodog]

The early ones were random anthologies mixing short sketches with longer scenes, I didn’t get the sense that they were supposed to be related and happening on the same day, maybe just sometimes. Later on they committed to full-episode scenarios with the hotel, baby, etc.

I preferred the early ones, I was only really “sniffy” about the film, tagging along to the cinema semi-reluctantly.

[Dave]

The film was a bit crap, in fairness. The second one even more so.

[Warbodog]

I completely misunderstood bloodteller’s point, you meant how the film starts, he mucks about, then it’s already over in seemingly one take. Yeah, that bothered me too.

[bloodteller]

Also speaking of VHS, one of my earliest memories of VHS was putting in my family’s 1991 holiday home video when I was uhhh, maybe six or seven, and after the end someone had taped an episode of something called “Red Dwarf”. The episode was Demons And Angels, which A. probably not suitable for a six year old and B. is a little confusing if you’ve never seen the show before. But that was what got me started on Red Dwarf, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I know that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but it just suddenly shot up in my memory as the first time I ever saw Red Dwarf. Also I carried on using VHS up until 2012, when I taped all of Red Dwarf X. So in a way, Red Dwarf sort of bookended my use of VHS tapes. I’ll always prefer them over DVDs, to be honest, although maybe that’s just nostalgia and stuff. Whole lot of memories of watching VHS as a kid, Mr Bean, Bottom, Simpsons Treehouse Of Horror, The Super Mario Bros Super Show…VHS was just a huge part of my childhood really, even though I’m a lot younger than most people who grew up with it (by the time I was born, DVDs were already out). Anyway, I have no idea what compelled me to type all this, but those are some of my VHS memories

[bloodteller]

I probably should have refreshed the thread before I hit “Submit”, now my post seems even more completely out of nowhere

[clem]

> also available were “the blood coloured one” and the “bluey, greeney, paddling pool sort of color

There was also the “violety, purpley, sort of potassium permanganate coloured one”.

I remember a brand new Mr Bean episode being quite the event when I was a kid, and the Unseen Bean video was highly coveted. Conducting the brass band in the Christmas episode is a favourite of mine.

[bloodteller]

>The film was a bit crap, in fairness. The second one even more so.

I agree Mr Bean’s Holiday was shit, but I always really liked Bean. The segments that were just jokes taken from the TV series were kind of pointless (We saw it the first time!) but the stuff that was new I really enjoyed. The whole thing with messing up Whistler’s Mother, then Mr Bean coming up with the genius plan to fix it all, the big speech about what the painting means to him, the scene at the amusement park etc. was all great, I thought. It had a lot of heart to it as well, which was nice. I think as far as adapting sitcoms into movies goes, Bean was probably one of the better ones (certainly better than the Bottom movie…)

[Dave]

I think the film just feels flabby and slow compared to the tightness of the TV episodes. It’s ok but not as good.

Conducting the brass band in the Christmas episode is a favourite of mine.

God yes, some of Atkinson’s best ever physical comedy, that.

[Warbodog]

Guest House Paradiso wasn’t on the Red Dwarf VII level of painful adolescent letdowns, but still pretty grim.

Kevin and Perry Go Large wasn’t my greatest cinematic experience either.

[bloodteller]

What the fuck was the point of Guest House Paradiso anyway? It was like a Bottom movie but not really, and the characters don’t really behave like themselves, and it’s all a bit bleak and off-key really (that scene where Gina is about to get raped by her abusive husband…what the fuck?). It just feels like some random movie that somebody else wrote that happens to have Rik and Ade in the lead roles, and it completely lacks the wit and energy of the show. It’s like somebody tried to write a Bottom movie after they’d had a really horrible and sad day

Kevin and Perry Go Large was mediocre, I thought. I mean it’s not great, but it’s acceptable I think?

[Warbodog]

In the wider context it’s Rik & Ade doing another version of their stock “Richie” and “Eddie” characters that had already gone through various iterations (Filthy, Rich and Catflap, Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, Bottom being the best known), and they made a point of stating that it wasn’t actually a Bottom film in an interview I’ve seen since on YouTube. But the way the characters look and act early on is so clearly Bottom, and that was all in the trailer, so it’s what we were expecting.

Wayne’s World is a much more successful example of upscaling a minimalist two-hander TV comedy to the big screen and adding a token movie babe and bad guy but still making it work.

[Dave]

League of Gentlemen, that was a good adaptation to film.

[Pete Part Three]

I have a fondness for Bean, specifically the scene in the gallery when he puts things right. It’s a great subversion of the character’s unothordox thinking screwing him over. And Goodall’s score is lovely.

Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean sticks in my head as being prime Mr Bean as all the “acts” are very strong. The Television reception from The Curse is great.

>Conducting the brass band in the Christmas episode is a favourite of mine.

The moment with the “volume dial”, Atkinson mouthing the brass bits and then wellin, never fails to make me smile. What a talent.

I’ll stick up for Kevin and Perry Go Large. It’s nowehere near as its reputation suggests and I liked the soundtrack when it came out (specifically Kid 2000). I did find it odd how The Inbetweeners 2 got away with ripping off one of the most maligned moments in K&P.

>League of Gentlemen, that was a good adaptation to film.

Really interesting premise too.

[Pete Part Three]

*welling up at the ‘sad” bit in “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”*

[Warbodog]

I’m always up for some meta masturbation, but I’d rather the League had just committed to a new premise for the full length rather than doing a lesser version of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare via Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation. Even if that meant they couldn’t have Tubbs in the trailer and the whole project would be financially ruinous.

Psychoville more than compensated in the end, so I’m not really complaining.

[(deleted)]

I’m going to really stick up for Mr Bean’s Holiday. Really interesting idea to do a ‘roots album’ version on Mr Bean, making it half post-war French silent comedy and half European art film. It’s beautifully directed and the score is delicious. That shot at the end where he walks blindly over obstacles towards the beach always makes me well up, it’s that perfectly realised a moment. It’s like the film’s tribute to the magic of early cinema suddenly comes full circle and supernaturally summons a glint of genuine old cinema magic itself, just for a second.

I think both Bean films are great in completely different ways (though the first has obvious pacing problems relating to an M&M sponsorship deal that got out of hand when it dictated what they keep and lose in the edit, meaning they lost 20 minutes of brilliant UK set stuff at the start and had to keep the ‘Dr Bean’ coda at a ridiculous length, pushing the ‘real’ Whistler ending to far too early in the film), and they really refreshed a character that had been running on empty for the last few, sub-CITV, TV outings (Do It Yourself was probably the last good one, and I often wondered if the video-only status of Hair By London was because it was both sub-par and cheap looking. Back To School is the absolute nadir – it’s just a mentally challenged man walking around being an evil shit to background characters that would be too broad for the Beano).

[Warbodog]

Cornetto trilogy is superior to Spaced. I’m very fond of Spaced series 1, but found series 2 a disappointment.

[By Jove its holmes]

Mr Bean does a few things which could be seen as “harassing, alarming and distressing” (to quote that old cliché again) if he similar things in public in real life, in other words, Mr Public would be arrested and even go to prison of he copied it for himself. Referring to the Goes to Town episode, when going back to the days when electric plugs had a “batteries not included” aspect towards electrical items and one had to wire them up, putting the Live, Earth and Neutral in the right place – when he buys a new television set we see Bean twist the wires into the plug which is something that would not work in real life – in fact, a Central continuity announcer had reminded Midlands viewers not to copy him doing that with a plug at the end of one of the mid 1990s repeats. The videos always got a U certificate and not a PG one by either the BBFC or the VSC.

Another was the fact that Mind the Baby was postponed twice in 1993 and 1994 because of the similarities with the storyline and the James Bulger murder. The fact that Bean takes an unrelated baby to a seaside destination (Southsea?) seems rather alarming when one thinks of child abductions and the like especially in the early to mid 1990s. For the 1993 showing it was replaced by the first showing of the Room 426 episode set in a hotel (and ironically enough, set in another costal destination), and was postponed again around a year later because of the trial and the distress, and was replaced by a repeat of a previous episode. It was eventually shown a few months after the Bulger murder trial was concluded.

Maybe it’s something to do with the tarnished image of Rolf Harris and memories of his old learn to swim PIF, but there’s something disturbing about this Mr Bean screenshot from this angle. I know it’s the STUPID SWIMWEAR the little girl is wearing is why her bare buttocks are in full view of the camera, bur I wonder if the scene would’ve been scrapped or shot at a different angle if it had been suggested during the Harris scandal? It’s kind of surprising that even in 1990, they transmitted it like this.

<img src=”https://i.imgur.com/Ml7dTi7.jpg&#8221;

[Warbodog]

I’m so glad that tag didn’t close correctly.

[By Jove its holmes]

For other buttock related mishaps transmitted on national television, the telesnaps for Episode 2 of the Doctor Who story The Savages reveal a distressing amount of Nanina’s backside for a show broadcast at teatime: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/photonovels/savages/two/29.shtml

[clem]

> they lost 20 minutes of brilliant UK set stuff at the start

Is any of it available anywhere other than that rather frustrating featurette that was on the VHS but not, AFAIK, any subsequent release of the film? Atkinson and Mel Smith introduce a few deleted scenes, or clips of deleted scenes, and talk a bit about why they were cut, and then maddeningly there’s a montage of more unused stuff.

[Dave]

This thread has gone weird now.

[International Debris]

Room 426 is one I struggle with, he’s just a bit *too* nasty in that, and just makes it his job to piss off another bloke relentlessly. I do like his little childish competitions with other people when they pop up momentarily, but 426’s focus on it is just unpleasant viewing.

I hated Bean at the time – too many jokes taken directly from the TV version, too much ‘normal’ plot – but I’d like to revisit it at some point. Never saw Holiday. Maybe I’ll watch that too.

[(deleted)]

To be honest, the media at large back then was still able to process the idea of children as something other as either nascent sexual beings or rape victims in waiting. Things like baby’s bottoms in nappy adverts etc were commonplace, because no sane person would automatically think of any other angle as we are radicalised to do now. Two decades of hysterical sickness later and children on TV are now just disposable props in a nihilistic nightmare which aims to somehow safeguard them by making it impossible to imagine them in any other context than as prey for sex criminals.

I’m not blaming you, it’s just this ruined fucking world, somehow simultaneously oversexualised to the point of constant danger and prudish to the point of desolation, quite literally throwing out the baby with the bathwater. To be honest I’d just like a small window of reality left where there isn’t an ever present cartoon icon of a sex offender’s tumescent dick in the corner of my vision, like an item in a fucking RPG.

[si]

This thread has gone weird now

Welcome to the G&T forum.

[Pete Part Three]

>This thread has gone weird now.

It started off weird, to be fair.

[Ben Saunders]

I like Mr Bean’s holiday because it turns into a really strange European art film, it’s totally unexpected and refreshing and really rather heartwarming, etc. Not what people expect from Mr. Bean, granted, so people who just want more Bean antics were probably disappointed by it.

[bloodteller]

>Wayne’s World is a much more successful example of upscaling a minimalist two-hander TV comedy to the big screen and adding a token movie babe and bad guy but still making it work.

Yeah, Wayne’s World is great. Wayne’s World 2 was kind of mediocre though, it really lacked the energy the first movie had.

One of my favourite TV-to-Movie adaptions is “A Night At The Roxbury”. That was literally just a 5 second clip of a few guys in a car banging their heads to Haddaway, and was rather well-adapted into an hour and a half movie, especially considering what they had to work with

[By Jove its holmes]

I think that in the long run, Mr Bean is an affectionate way of looking at someone who is different to most other people. One could say that about Arkwright with his speech impediment, or even Frank Spencer and his mannerisms. The Lou and Andy characters in Little Britain could also be added to list because of the use of a wheelchair.

Have a look at the ending of the cinema scene in The Curse Of… when the Nightmare On Elm Street film has finished. Bean does behave in the cinema rather like someone who is, shall we say, disturbed, or is like some child who plays up in class. If anything, I warmed quite well to the character who often finds everyday things that most people take for granted in life or find easy, rather difficult, and tries to find his own solution to them.

Also, in the Goes to Town episode when they are at the disco and his partner meets another man and Bean is obviously and understandably jealous, getting his own back by shutting down the power supply at the end – the issues of relationships amongst those who are different is more than apparent there.

[Warbodog]

>Wayne’s World 2 was kind of mediocre though, it really lacked the energy the first movie had.

Wayne’s World 2 is unnecessary and fails to recapture the magic, but still enjoyable (best part). Feels like it’s about 60% parodies of other things.

Hugely prefer Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey to Excellent Adventure though, but that’s largely because I saw it at the cinema when I was six and it blew my mind. I’ve observed a trend where British people like Bogus Journey and Americans think it’s crap. Based on a wide sample of about three subjects.

[Pete Part Three]

There’s some great moments in Wayne World 2, but it doesn’t really hang together as a movie at all. The Graduate stuff towards the end is just bizarre. That “best part” video cuts of just before Ralph Brown though, so it’s still up for debate.

Also a fan of Bogus Journey over Excellent Adventure. We need some yanks to weigh in.

>Room 426 is one I struggle with, he’s just a bit *too* nasty in that, and just makes it his job to piss off another bloke relentlessly. I do like his little childish competitions with other people when they pop up momentarily, but 426’s focus on it is just unpleasant viewing.

Agreed. There’s plenty of times where we see why Bean tries to one-up someone but this episode is a shitshow. The exam sketch in the Pilot with Bean producing pens to show how much more “prepared” he is than Paul Brown makes sense, because it’s all about hubris. No such justification for it in 426.

The show fucks up when we don’t understand Bean’s thought-processes. It’s near-silent comedy, so we have to get the logic, however skewed, behind his bizarre actions.

I think the intention was that the other guy gets the better hotel room (which he does; his has a bath) and if they’d sold that idea by the guy nipping in front of Bean at reception and “stealing” the room Bean was supposed to get, we’d have at least got the justification going forward. However, Bean is a tit to him before that even happens. The scene in the dining hall (with Bean stacking his plate with more food than his enemy for… reasons?) is particularly bizarre. Maybe a problem of this episode being completely away from a studio audience.

[Dave]

The exam sketch in the Pilot with Bean producing pens to show how much more “prepared” he is than Paul Brown

For years I misremembered the other actor in this scene as being Sean Bean, and was shocked when I realised it wasn’t, like some weird Mandela Effect.

[Pete Part Three]

I had to google it to make sure it wasn’t Hugo Speer.

[Warbodog]

I haven’t really watched any Mr Bean since childhood, which might be some stupid prejudice I need to shake off. Especially since I keep coming back to Rowan Atkinson pre-Bean stand-up when I feel like a random quickie.

School master clean version > dirty version.

[clem]

I recommend RA’s Live in Belfast album. It’s on Spotify.

I’ve never had a problem with Bean behaving like a childish prick for the sake of it in Room 426, tbh. Maybe I would if I saw it for the first time today. He does get his comeuppance, at least, first with the oysters and then Danny La Rue.

[Warbodog]

Watched the first few Beans. First episode in particular is fantastic and with more rampant innuendo than I expected, even when I already remembered the tumescent Pink Panther. Maybe that was Ben Elton’s contribution?

(I’ll spare you the commentary for every episode).

[Ben Saunders]

I’ve never given much thought to Bean as a character who should be bounded by consistent characterisation and development etc, to me it’s just Rowan Atkinson doing outrageous things. It’s a sketch show, not a sitcom. That said, there are of course things Bean would and wouldn’t do, and he does get more mean-spirited over time, but I think the rule of “if it’s funny, it’s funny” applies to something like this

[clem]

> I’ve observed a trend where British people like Bogus Journey and Americans think it’s crap. Based on a wide sample of about three subjects.

Aren’t the writers and Reeves and Winter a bit down on Bogus Journey themselves? That’s the impression I seem to have gotten from interviews and such, although come to think of it, I can’t recall anything specific except some mild criticism of the director’s decision to recast the Princesses.

Bogus Journey is my earliest memory of seeing a film in the cinema. I’d have been 8 and thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen, but I hadn’t seen Excellent Adventure at the time. They both do my curmudgeonly soul good, and I won’t choose a favourite. That said, I hope the third film is more like BJ than EA, in terms of ambition and downright bizarreness.

> We need some yanks to weigh in.

Perhaps someone from Medieval England, Iowa?

[Warbodog]

Bogus Journey is the film I most want to see an extended cut of, since missing scenes teasingly show up briefly in trailers, soundtrack dialogue, trading cards and the comic adaptation. Or at least to see the deleted scenes properly, where the hell are they?

This comment on Den of Geek was what I was thinking of. Just one needlessly angry person, but I remember I’d been mulling the US vs. UK sentiment before then:

MartinInOR: No one I know. NO ONE likes Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. There is nothing funny about it and its a weak, weak sequel. Must be a Brit thing that you’;ve enjoyed it so much. Universally hated here and ignored when its broadcast. I can’;t believe you people.

Maybe it’s one of those films that got buried in the competition over there but happened to do better here. Or more generalised bollocks about how Brits are more comfortable laughing at death and not taking heaven and hell too seriously, if you conveniently ignore The Simpsons and everything.

(P.S. All Americans like Terrorform best; it’s a fact).

[Pete Part Three]

>the rule of “if it’s funny, it’s funny” applies to something like this

That was the point though. It you’re just watching a mentally ill person victimise someone in bizarre ways for no clear reason, it’s not funny. The point of silent comedians is to convey what they’re thinking without words so we understand the reasons behind their actions (if not the actions themselves).

My resistance to a third B&T film is just from how much I adore the last ten minutes of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. I don’t really get the pitch for Film 3 after watching that.

[Dave]

I’ve had the same thoughts about the pitch for “Bill & Ted Face The Music”. It seems to require completely ignoring or overwriting the final moments of Bogus Journey, which is such a joyful sequence that it would be a real shame.

I love both Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey equally, I think. I wonder whether some of the resistance to the sequel was that it went in such a different direction, rather than just rehashing the first one. There’s so much good, new stuff in it though.

[International Debris]

I’ve never seen either of the Bill & Ted films and, as a kid, everything my friends said about them put me off them enough to never want to see them. I’m aware of how this makes me look.

[Warbodog]

I probably wouldn’t like Bill & Ted 1 if it wasn’t for the second one, it’s a bit broad and not as admirably weird as the sequel, but both have clever time travel gags in there. I don’t know what you think of Moffat Doctor Who, but some of those gags/logic are similar, especially to the 1999 Comic Relief thing with Rowan Atkinson (to accidentally almost bring this back on topic).

Bill & Ted and Wayne’s World both have a great positive vibe (in spite of the death angle in Bill & Ted 2. Death has no place in comedy). At heart they’re feel-good comedies about great friends dealing with challenges with chirpy optimism, inane winsome grins and nonsensical but internally-logical slang expressions. Apart from those regrettable bits where Bill & Ted use a once popular homophobic slur (as a kid, I thought they were sarcastically saying “thanks”).

[Warbodog]

Maybe similar, or I’m just being sleep-deprived.

[Dave]

More like the end of Stasis Leak really.

[Warbodog]

Visually, but I was thinking the way we catch up with the other side of the conversation to complete the loop and get up to speed, more delayed in Bill & Ted. Red Dwarf’s loop is tidier because it doesn’t have the plot hole / bootstrap paradox of where they learned the name ‘Rufus’ from in the first place, since no one told them apart from themselves (unless there’s a time when it could have happened off-screen, I can’t remember).

[Author]

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