Mr. Bean’s Holiday

Bean wins a holiday trip to Cannes, a video camera, and €200 in a raffle, and soon finds that travel chaos will follow him across France. Upon arriving, he darts between temptations and misadventures, sampling seafood in Paris and nudging the French film world into a wild, improvised comedy of errors. He even persuades the Emil Duchevsky to film him boarding a train at the Gare de Lyon, turning a routine journey into a slapstick rehearsal of chaos as they dutifully redo retakes at Bean’s insistence until the train finally pulls away with Duchevsky’s son, Stepan, aboard and the director left behind.

The bond between Bean and Stepan grows quickly as they ride the railway fantasy to the next station, only to be thwarted again when Duchevsky’s train passes through without stopping. A sign with a phone number appears, held up by Duchevsky for Stepan to call, but the digits are partially obscured. Bean’s attempts to dial the number with every possible combination of digits fail, and an incoming train offers a new chance to continue the journey. They’re ejected at Cavaillon when Bean discovers his wallet, passport, and ticket were left behind at the previous stop, forcing a new scramble to keep moving.

To survive and keep moving toward Cannes, Bean takes to the streets as a mime, earning money and buying food and bus tickets along the way. A gust of wind snatches his ticket and sends it fluttering onto the foot of a chicken, which is loaded into a farmer’s truck. Bean chases the truck to a rural farm, but the swarms of chickens make it almost impossible to locate the ticket. A failed hitchhiking attempt leads him onward on foot, and the day bleeds into an even stranger turn when he awakens on the set of an elaborate yogurt commercial.

The commercial is directed by the American filmmaker Carson Clay and stars aspiring actress Sabine, with a quaint village besieged by imaginary Nazi soldiers. Mistaken for an extra, Bean briefly participates as a soldier before being dismissed for carrying his video camera and, in a comic misfire, causes the set to explode while recharging the camera.

Continuing to hitchhike, Bean is picked up again by a Mini identical to his own, this time driven by Sabine herself, who is en route to the Cannes Film Festival where her debut film, Playback Time, is to be shown under the direction of Carson Clay. They pause at a service station where Bean is briefly reconnected with Stepan. Sabine welcomes him along, believing Stepan to be Bean’s son, and by morning the trio arrives in Cannes after Bean drives through the night while Sabine sleeps.

At a petrol station, Sabine learns on the news that she and Bean are suspected of kidnapping Stepan. Rather than head to the police, they improvise a disguise, presenting themselves as mother and daughter to slip into Playback Time’s premiere. Inside the theater, the crowd remains largely indifferent to Playback Time, a film about a homicide detective pining for a lost love. When Sabine discovers her role has been cut, Bean improvises again, plugging his camera into the projector and swapping the film’s visuals with his video diary. The footage reframes the narrative, casting Sabine as the hero’s lost love and Bean as her new partner, and the audience responds with an energetic standing ovation as Stepan is finally reunited with his parents onstage.

The night ends with a quiet escape through the theater’s back door and a final celebration on the Cannes beach. There, Bean, Sabine, Stepan, Carson Clay, and others join in a playful mime tribute to the sea’s timeless cadence, with the song “La Mer” underscoring a whimsical end to a wildly wandering journey.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:31