Thursday

It's been puzzling me as to why they have made another Mr Bean film. I had thought the first one was such a failure that it had killed off the character and any hope of a franchise. An hour and a half of a guy who doesn't talk? That's weird. Bean worked in a particular time and place, and for very short fragments. The transference to the big screen and America seemed an awful idea. Anyway, it's been done again, and apparently this time Rowan Atkinson says this is the last one. We can only hope. The review on imdb suggests a connection with 'the silent greats' Keaton and Chaplin. Well, maybe. But they were stretching their medium and its technology as far as it would go. Atkinson is limiting his. Not that that's a bad thing (see Funny Ha Ha), but silent comedy just doesn't feel right anymore. I did like the original Bean TV series, but it seems to have passed its moment. Anyway, it got me thinking about successful and unsuccessful transferences from TV to Film (or short to long). It's very hard to get right.