Four Weddings and a Funeral

Year of Release:  1994

Director:  Mike Newell

Screenplay:  Richard Curtis

Starring:  Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, Kristin Scott Thomas, Simon Callow, James Fleet, John Hannah, Charlotte Coleman, Corin Redgrave, Rowan Atkinson

Running Time:  117 minutes

Genre:  Romantic comedy

Londoner Charles (Grant) is invited to several weddings without getting married himself, until at one wedding he meets and falls for fellow guest, American Carrie (MacDowell).  Over a number of weddings and a funeral, the couple bond but constantly seem to be kept apart.

Four Weddings and a Funeral was released to comparatively little fanfare in the summer of 1994 and became a global smash hit, ending up as the most successful British film ever made up to that point. It made a star of Hugh Grant, and crowned writer Richard Curtis (at the time best known for TV comedies such as Mr. Bean (1990-1995) and Blackadder (1983-1989)) as Britain's romcom king.  The film is set almost entirely at the weddings and the funeral of the title (presented as chapters divided by title cards designed as wedding invitations).  This gives the film an episodic feel and means that we never get to know much about Charles and his friends.  Andie MacDowell as Carrie, in particular suffers from this approach.  We only ever see her through Charles' eyes, drifting in and out of the proceedings, and she doesn't really make much of an impact, and while we are constantly told that he is in love with her, it never really feels that way.  However this is a film that is full of small, incidental pleasures.  Hugh Grant gives his definitive performance as the quintessential bumbling, polite Englishman, and John Hannah gives a powerful performance, with his moving reading of W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues" a highlight.    This is one of the classic comedies, and while it is far from perfect, it is consistently funny with moments of real emotion.  

 Andie MacDowell and Hugh Grant attend Four Weddings and a Funeral

Bean

 Year of Release:  1997

Director:  Mel Smith

Screenplay:  Richard Curtis and Robin Driscoll, based on the television series Mr. Bean created by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson

Starring:  Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNicol, Pamela Reed, Harris Yulin, Sandra Oh, Burt Reynolds

Running Time:  90 minutes

Genre:  Comedy

Mr. Bean (Atkinson) is a well-meaning but clumsy and accident prone security guard at the National Gallery in London.  Unable to fire him, the gallery's board of directors select Bean as their representative to oversee the transfer and unveiling of the painting of Whistler's Mother by James McNeill Whistler to the Grierson Gallery in Los Angeles.  The Grierson's curator, David Langley (MacNicol) his impressed by Bean's false profile and offers to accommodate him at his family home, much to the displeasure of his wife, Alison (Reed), and his two children.  However, Bean's inadvertent ability to create absolute chaos threatens to ruin everything for David.

Mr. Bean started out as a British television sitcom which ran for 15 episodes between 1990 and 1995.  The series was hugely popular bit in Britain and around the world, due in no small part to the fact that the series was almost entirely free of dialogue.  The comedy was entirely physical, and the almost non-existent dialogue really had nothing to do with the episode's plot.  In the film there is dialogue and also a plot.  Mr. Bean would speak in strange, strangulated voice and, true to the series, he does have very little dialogue, and the humour is also mostly slapstick, physical comedy.  It's not a bad film, but it's not a good one either.  It's a fine enough film to pass the time, and it is funny, but it's not really something that will stick in the memory.  Rowan Atkinson is a very talented physical comedian, the problem is that the character of Mr. Bean is great for a half hour TV show, but spread out over an hour and a half it's just too much.  Peter MacNicol provides a good counterpoint to Mr. Bean's clowning as the harried, put upon curator.  

  Rowan Atkinson in Bean