Parents Television Council Reviews

PTC reviews aim to provide you with advance information about an entertainment offering so that you can be the final arbiter of what you and your family see.

Mr. Bean's Holiday (aka Mr. Bean’s Vacation)

By Caroline Schulenburg

Release date: August 24^th, 2007 

MPAA Rating: G

Starring: Rowan Atkinson, Emma de Caunes, Willem Dafoe, Max Baldry

Genre: Comedy

Recommended age: Ages 5 and up

Overall PTC Traffic Light Rating: Green

This summer, Rowan Atkinson has returned as Mr. Bean, the Mini-driving, tweed jacketed Briton who often finds himself trapped in the most outrageous of predicaments.

In Mr. Bean’s Holiday, Mr. Bean has had the good fortune to win a trip to France, as well as a video camera to chronicle his vacation. Ever a fan of life’s simpler pleasures, Mr. Bean bypasses the halls of the Louvre and the splendor of Paris to achieve the simple goal of going to the beach in Cannes. When confusion at a train station leaves him responsible for reuniting a young Russian boy named Stepan with his father, Mr. Bean is forced to improvise his way through one scrape after another. Train tickets are lost, wallets are left behind and a little boy gets very, very hungry, prompting a moving opera performance that audiences won’t soon forget.

The movie is free of sexual content and foul language. The only content of possible concern to parents is found in a scene where Mr. Bean wakes up on a movie set for a yogurt commercial, which is set in World War II. Tanks storm through a village, soldiers run with their guns poised to fire and a large explosion takes place and partially destroys a building. It is soon demonstrated that the violence is staged and is not particularly scary. When Mr. Bean is given a role in the commercial, he is dressed in a World War II-style uniform in which he tries to goose-step and imitate a Nazi. The image is particularly comical and is for the most part an attempt to demonstrate how ridiculous Nazis must have looked in the first place.

The film contains a good number of positive messages. Mr. Bean, while painfully unused to relating to children, assumes responsibility for the boy who has ended up in his care. The boy’s father demonstrates responsibility by trying to find his son. When Mr. Bean and Stepan are stranded on their way to Cannes, a young actress named Sabine befriends them and drives them the rest of the way out of the goodness of her heart.

As with all of Mr. Bean’s adventures, this one ends happily but not without the twists and turns that always accompany him in his exploits. Mr. Bean’s Holiday is a fun movie for children and an enjoyable alternative for parents everywhere.

Because of its wonderfully imaginative and clean family-friendly comedy, we recommend this film for children over the age of 5.

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