Director: Steve Bendelack, PG, 90min

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

On general release

The disaster-prone slapstick of Atkinson’s Mr Bean is an acquired taste. Yet ten years ago it had been sufficiently acquired to make Bean’s big-screen debut an international box-office hit as he caused havoc in the easy-to-mock Los Angeles art world. Now he’s back with more mishaps abroad. Thanks to a church raffle prize, Bean heads to the South of France. On the train out of Paris, he manages to separate a Cannes-bound Russian film director from his young son. Despite inevitably losing his money and passport, Bean is determined to reunite the boy with his father at the film festival via a haphazard route across France. Along the way, he disrupts a commercial (imagine a bucolic Stella Artois advert with wartime Nazis) being made by an egotistical film director (Dafoe), hooks up with the advert’s lead actress (De Caunes), and ends up in drag disrupting the Cannes premiere of Dafoe’s pretentious cop movie.

Fans will know what’s coming in set-ups that emphasise Bean’s clumsiness, single-minded but misguided logic and childlike me-too urges. Whether he’s trapping his tie in a vending machine, disposing of unwanted oysters in a restaurant or trying to be a street performer, the film seldom surprises. And there are only so many times one can take Atkinson gurning his rubbery mug into expressions of childlike pleasure and panicked alarm as Bean records his every move with a camcorder.

Unlike the previous film, this lessens the dialogue for more physical comedy but fatally lacks momentum. And since there’s no location that doesn’t offer Bean opportunities for slapstick and embarrassment, the French setting is left looking superfluous. This is strictly for Bean fans — but then I guess it’s public demand that has prompted this belated sequel. Still, there’s a sweet concluding singalong to Charles Trenet’s La Mer and a nice pay-off after the end credits.

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