Mr Bean’s Holiday (PG)

MR BEAN heads to the south of France for a simple holiday in the sun, but his journey from London to the Riviera soon transcends into one of mischief and mayhem as he inadvertently creates havoc wherever he goes.

Mr Bean, who began life on British television screens in 1990, has become a worldwide star thanks to Rowan Atkinson's unique ability to marry endearing physical comedy and slapstick with a lovable personality.

Following the huge international success of the first Bean film, which raked in more than $260 million worldwide on its release in 1997, it was only a matter of time before the film's creators decided to give the character a second big screen outing.

However, with Mr Bean's Holiday, the filmmakers were very keen not to retread the same path, both stylistically and narratively.

"We always felt that there was another movie to be made with Mr Bean, but it would be a very different film from the first one," explains Rowan Atkinson, who co-created the comedy character with Richard Curtis.

"We did the first movie ten years ago and if we were going to make a sequel it would have been logical to make it eight or nine years ago rather than now, but it just took time to get round to thinking about it."

It was not hard for Atkinson to play the character again, despite a decade having passed since he last did so. "I haven't visited him much since the last film - the last time I played the character was on a British children's TV programme about two years ago.

"But I didn't find it difficult in finding him again, understanding him and knowing how he would behave in any given situation. I no longer have to work on him or think about him and how he's going to react.

"I instinctively know him, his childish instincts are very strong to me. The challenge of filming for me is being at the centre of the film and being in virtually every scene and making sure that the relationships between Bean and the people he meets work and work well."

Atkinson was also intrigued by the chance to explore a different style of filmmaking that a new film would offer.

"I always believed that there was a European style movie to be made with Mr Bean," he says.

"The first movie was more American in style. It had the story, format and tone of an American family comedy.

"I was always interested in the idea of Bean being the pro-active element, being the element driving the story, rather than him being a reactive element, a sort of satellite figure who was in the background while the story was being driven by other characters, which was the shape of the first film."

Mr Bean comes across two characters on his journey, a boy and a woman. The boy, played by Max Baldry, becomes Bean's responsibility as he struggles to reunite him with his family, and can't speak English; the woman, Sabine (Emma de Caunes), is not a romantic interest but is swept up in Bean's adventure.

De Caunes, one of France's rising stars who most recently starred in The Science of Sleep, says the decision to accept the role of Sabine was very simple, as she was already very familiar with the character of Bean, thanks to her father, TV presenter Antoine de Caunes.

"When I was 15 or 16, my dad used to bring me back the tapes of Bean and I was really mad for it. He really made me laugh so I'm a huge fan. I love the fact that he's really quite innocent, like a child and we can all understand him. And there's a lot of poetry in the film.

"It was also an opportunity to work with Rowan who is an amazing actor. The role is not just burlesque, he's a fantastic actor and I really loved watching him working and improvising. For me, he's like a Charlie Chaplin."

"A very important element of the story is that Mr Bean has a video camera with him at all times," continues Atkinson.

"Effectively two movies are playing out throughout our film - there is the film that we are making and then there's the movie that Mr Bean has made of his experiences on the road.

"What's interesting is the way those two merge and overlap and intertwine and so there is this sense in which the nature of movies and moviemaking is at the centre of the story. I hope that the film is as true, if not more true to the character and what people have enjoyed about the character, than anything we've done before," concludes Atkinson.

"I hope it's going to be a more pure representation of Bean than we've seen. I hope the audience will be with the character and rooting for him more and sympathising with him more than you ever have before. That is my hope."