Mr. Bean's Holiday (G) Grade: B

ritics have flung a lot of Internet ink debating the merits and perils of Mr. Bean, a character created by British comedian Rowan Atkinson. Admittedly, Bean is a mercurial twit, vacillating uncontrollably between benevolence and pettiness. Yet, to relegate him to the child movie bin would handicap adult audiences from an important realization: There's a little bit of the good, bad and guttural in all of us.\nIn this installment, Mr. Bean wins a trip to the south of France and a Sony Handycam. He arrives in Paris, only to contend with a mistaken taxi and a platter of raw oysters. Finally finding the train to Cannes, France, Mr. Bean coaxes a man (Karel Roden) to document his departure, sauntering like royalty through multiple takes on his beloved camcorder. The train whistle blows. Mr. Bean boards, but the door closes on the man. The man's young son (Max Baldry) is left wailing and alone on the high-speed rail.\nAside from lapses into the comic (miming to Puccini's "O mio babbino caro") and the absurd (appearing triumphant after the off-screen destruction of a wooden shed), Mr. Bean devotes his energies to reuniting father and son. Perchance, the father is a juror for the Cannes film festival, and by the story's end, Mr. Bean has fulfilled his mission while inadvertently revamping art-house moviemaking.\nMany critics have dismissed "Mr. Bean's Holiday" as a flawed riff on Jacques Tati's "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday." The titles are similar enough, and the rubber-limbed Mr. Bean could very well be the postmodern spawn of mild-mannered M. Hulot; but the physical comedy of Atkinson departs entirely from the whimsical tinkering of Tati. Nevertheless, both films have satirical ends: Tati the tedium of middle-class French life, Atkinson the snobbery of high art countervailed only by friendship. Therefore, how much you enjoy "Mr. Bean's Holiday" depends heavily on how much you discern between a punch line and the general folly of life.