Tag: Movies

Mr Bean’s Holiday (IMDb.com movie page)
My Rating: A- (Almost Perfect); ONLY because it pales in comparison to Johnny English.
By: Universal Studios / Working Title Pictures / StudioCanal / Tiger Aspect Pictures
Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Willem Dafoe, Emma de Caunes, Jean Rochefort, Max Baldry
Directed by: Steve Bendelack

When I saw the review in HT, where Vinayak Chakraborty said this movie was ‘Bean there done that’, I was sort of disappointed. He blasted it for using old jokes. Never mind, assholes that most critics are, I walked out satisfied out of the theatre. In what apparently will be the last appearance of Bean, a few scenes used old jokes, but it fitted in well – it’s really nostalgic. Seriously, the only thing Vinayak Chakraborty ever does is tell us which movies the actors have acted in earlier, which movies the director has directed earlier etc. It seems from the bloated face on accompanying photo that all he does when he goes to watch a movie is gorge on some complimentary nachos thrown in by PVR. In contrast to what he said about it being ‘totally slapstick’, I found it very engaging and funny, with loads of hidden jokes and sarcasm.

The story is about Bean who wins a raffle and wins a holiday to France, along with a Sony handycam. He goes there (and you’ll see some amazing raw cam footage throughout the movie), and after much ‘traveling’, reaches the station. There he makes a Russian jury member of the Cannes Film Festival get separated from his son, and the son then takes revenge by making Bean miss his train at a later station. The rest of the movie is how the duo try to get to Cannes after Bean has lost everything, and it’s one wild fun ride from there. I won’t tell more of the story beyond that, because it’d spoil all the fun… 😉

I have to admit that this movie will NOT be liked in India – simply because the majority of the movie going public here aren’t comfortable by the style adopted by the movie. I, on the other hand, simply LOVE the style. In contrast to the first Bean movie, this one has almost NO dialogs – it’s more about Bean and his antics, which remain funny and fresh as usual. What I liked even more though is the mix-match of camera footage, and handycam footage from Bean’s camera. Sony does excellent brand placement in the movie (remember Casino Royale? THAT was brand overkill by Sony…), and you’d really want to buy a Sony handycam by the end of it. After all, who thought that a Sony handycam can go on for hours and hours recording all the time, needing only a small 15-20 minute break after more than 24 hours? My, it has so much storage too then I guess. :p

Anyway, besides that error, the effect of a story being told through Bean’s viewpoint using the handycam footage is really engrossing, BUT that it EXACTLY why people won’t like it in India. The OTHER reason why it’ll not be liked in India is because the crowd won’t GET most of the jokes. For example, one oft-repeated joke in the movie is when Bean say ‘Gracias’ (it’s Spanish) whenever he has to say ‘thank you’, and my laughter was pretty much echoing in the hall because apart from me, only a handful of other people got it. Now THAT is a dampener. And believe me, there were MANY other moments when the crowd didn’t GET the joke [shakes fist in consternation].

A thing about the music (or Rach will pester me to death) – thankfully, it’s not cheesy like the ones on the TV series, or the first Bean movie. Frankly, I found the soundtrack on the above two mildly irritating, but this one doesn’t make that mistake. You’ve quite a few stretches without much distracting soundtrack in this movie.

Rach kept on asking me what “William Defoe’s role” was in the movie. I don’t know about ‘William Defoe’, but Willem Dafoe had a part in the film as famous actor-director Carson Clay. Sample this funny moment at the Cannes Film Festival (in the movie, that’s where Bean ends up at) where his new movie is being shown – the movie starts, and the intro credits are: “a CARSON CLAY production [pause] of a CARSON CLAY film [pause] featuring CARSON CLAY”. Dafoe hasn’t much to do in the movie, except show how moronic some directors are. Watch out for this scene, because this is one of the MOST hilarious in the whole movie, because this is when Bean crashes in and while the audio is of Clay’s movie, plays his own footage from his camera. Listen to the dialogs and correlate them to the video on screen, and it’ll have you ROFL. Act like the typical Indian movie-goer (which means “Don’t pay much attention to dialogs”), and you’ll find it boring.

Mr Bean’s Holiday is a fitting end to the Bean franchise (maybe?) – it’s is wildly funny, and yet, at one level, thought-provoking. It definitely has an undercurrent about a narrative on human nature. Rowan Atkinson may have found Bean to irritating and overpowering to continue with, but he definitely shines through in this one, as he always does. This is one movie which you’ll like if you get sarcasm without much thinking, otherwise, you’ll end up with a feeling that you were robbed at the box office. And I just LOVE the raw footage!

And then, I’m getting really irritated with PVR. When I went to watch 300, they had had some major problems. Similar things happened when I went to watch Bean – they gave a bloody TWENTY minute long interval TEN minutes before the movie ended, during which my tongue was as dry as parchment as I couldn’t leave to get my refill. Also, one thing I don’t like about theatre crowds is that they empty the hall in a few seconds, and I always like sticking around for the credits, but have to move before I can see them because the guards / employees think I’m some lunatic as I’m always the last to leave. Sigh.

One thing I really really hate while watching movies as geek is the factually incorrect sequences related to computers in most movies. After all, do they think that NOBODY in the movie going public is going to notice anything? :p Here are some really pathetic computer-related movie mistakes:

• I’ve got conclusive and solid proof that the reason why iPods are so popular is the fact that it’s based on alien technology. No, I’m not kidding. There’s a chance that Steve Jobs is an alien too, and might turn green and bleeping one day if he gets too angry. After all, in the movie Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum’s character creates a virus on his faithful old Mac, goes to those alien baddies’ mother ship, and infects their computers, thus bringing their defences down and leading to a human victory. My only problem is, how on EARTH (pun intended) can a bloody Mac virus affect an alien operating system! After all, even on earth we’ve hardly had more than concept viruses which are multi-OS. It’s only Microsucks that gets targetted, and those viruses are useless on other platforms. But since Hollywood is SO truthful about everything, I must say that even though Mac OS doesn’t have more than 2% market share on Earth, naturally it’s so much better than Microsucks Windows that it’s the operating system of choice even for aliens. Which brings up a very bright possibility that maybe the aliens gave Apple Inc the ‘revolutionary’ ideas and technologies behind the iPod in return for seem free / discounted CDs of Mac OS.
• I’ve pointed this out in my review of the movie The Departed, and I repeat it here again – doughnut dunking Boston Police cops working on Dell PCs don’t have enough brains to install Mac OS on them. In multiple scenes, Matt Damon is shown working on a Dell PC, but the interface is that of Mac OS.
• Here’s another Warner Bros movie apart from The Departed that’s guilty – one of the most boring, mind-numbing and senseless movies ever made on this planet, The Constant Gardener (apart from the pathetic name), has scenes were non-Mac laptops are shown running Mac OS. What’s the problem with Warner Bros! What’s next – Harry Potter using Mac OS?
• Lots of talk about Mac, let’s switch over to something else. For example, in my most favorite movie The Italian Job, notice carefully the scene where Shawn Fanning (the actual creator of Napster) makes a cameo appearance to steal the Napster program while Lyle (Seth Green) is sleeping. Just look at the screen then, it’s running Windows XP!!! That too in 1999, while XP was launched sometime in 2003! It’s a really small thing, and not many would notice it, but still, it mars an otherwise amazing plot. I just can’t wait for The Brazilian Job!
• What’s it with on-screen hackers and telephone companies. I mean, Lyle in The Italian Job, and that chap in The Core, both claim to have hacked into their phone companies.
• I hate most movies which show an unrealistic representation of how easy hacking is – it’s not. And also for movie writers, who when referring to a computer related topic throw in some nonsense hi-fi sounding mumbo-jumbo terms thinking audiences won’t notice it. THAT really puts me off. However, The Italian Job gets real high scores here, because they actually show Lyle failing to gain access to computer systems before succeeding. It’s much more realistic.
• As for my favorite movie related to computers, it’s The Net. For a movie made in 1995, showing use of cellphones, laptop toting computer professionals, online shopping et al, it was really really far ahead of its time. Again, it scores for realistic representation of computing scenarios, that too in a world when UNIX was the prevalent OS, not Windows. This movie is a must watch, and really thought-provoking, as to the sway computers hold in our lives, and how with sufficient planning, our identities could be stolen. It also warns us not to give up computer systems to a monopoly (you know which direction I’m pointing at here, and it includes more than just Microsoft), because that weakens us more. Really, you don’t need to be a geek to watch this, there are no techno babble dialogues.

And I know it doesn’t fit in here, but there’s one more MAJOR mistake I’d like to point out from another one of my all time favorite movies, Armageddon. In the scene where we see Ben Affleck’s space shuttle crash on the doomsday asteroid, you’ll see fire burning at the debris site! Now any person with an elementary knowledge of science knows you require oxygen for a fire, and there’s none in outer space, which is why they need to go around in goofy spacesuits. Since it’s shown in the movie that the spaceship is hit by space debris and depressurises, it’s a real big mistake, really really stupid to show fires at the crash site.