Bean

Mr. Bean is a watchman at London's Royal National Gallery whose incompetence has long exasperated his superiors. Only the chairman's fondness for him keeps him employed, so the board seizes a convenient opportunity: an American museum has asked the gallery to send its foremost art expert to Los Angeles for the unveiling of a valuable painting. Instead of a scholar, they dispatch Bean, hoping the trip will finally expose him as useless. In California he is hosted by a curator who takes him at face value, and the visit soon disrupts the curator's work and home life alike. Bean must somehow get the painting presented without ruining everything.

Mel Smith directed the film, the second of the three features he made, following Radioland Murders and preceding Blackball. Richard Curtis and Robin Driscoll wrote the screenplay, and Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Peter Bennett-Jones produced. Rowan Atkinson plays Bean, with Peter MacNicol as David Langley, Pamela Reed as Alison Langley, Tricia Vessey and Andrew Lawrence as the Langley children, and Harris Yulin as George Grierson. The cast runs to 38 credited performers and the crew to 108.

Made for about 18 million dollars, the film returned roughly 251 million worldwide, a large multiple of its cost. On IMDb it holds 6.5 out of 10 across some 116,000 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 6.5 from about 2,670 votes. A critics' rating of 5.4 out of 10 from 34 reviews places it below both audience scores.