Mr. Bean’s Holiday

Englishman Rowan Atkinson’s bizarre little alter ego wins a Riviera vacation in a church raffle, but everything goes wrong, sweeping a Russian boy (Max Baldry) and a French actress (Emma de Caunes) up in his misadventures. Atkinson’s mincing, grimacing, monkey-pounding-on-a-keyboard style is admittedly a matter of taste. Those already tuned in to his weird wavelength (he’s been playing this character off and on since 1990) will again be beside themselves with mirth. For the rest of us, laughs are fewer, and generally of the can-you-believe-this-guy variety, harkening back to high school days when some show-off dork would regale us with his lame jokes, refusing to just shut the hell up and go the hell home. Atkinson hogs the camera relentlessly, but Willem Dafoe adds a cameo as a fatuous movie director.