×

WHERE TO WATCH

Powered by JustWatch

"The British gave him an air ticket. Their government gave him a passport. The USA gave him a visa of entry. Now, there's no stopping him. He's on his way... to America."

— Teaser narrator

A 1997 theatrical film based upon Mr. Bean.

Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) is a rather incompetent security guard at Britain's Royal National Gallery. Desperate to get rid of him but unable to fire him, thanks to a good word from the chairman, the gallery's board sends Bean to a gallery in Los Angeles to deliver and officiate the return of the painting Whistler's Mother to the United States. Believing him to be a fine arts scholar, the LA gallery pairs Bean up with their mousy curator David Langley (Peter MacNicol) to accommodate him and ensure that nothing happens to the painting, all while Langley tries to keep his familial troubles at home under control. Naturally, everything goes wrong.

Bean would later get another movie in 2007, Mr. Bean's Holiday, which was a stand-alone sequel with little relation to this film aside from the presence of the title character and served to be truer in tone to the original series.

Bean contains examples of:

• Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: Bean, having accidentally defaced Whistler's Mother, locks the door and drags a plant pot in front of it to keep out the curator. A couple of seconds later, the curator enters via another door, right next to the one Bean locked.
• Achievements in Ignorance: Bean saves the life of Detective Brutus by accidentally removing the bullet from his abdomen, without using any surgical tools, while searching for a peanut M&M he had dropped into the wound. He even puts the bullet back (being unsure it belongs in there) and then repeats the feat in front of an utterly stunned surgical team. He later manages to wake up Jennifer from her coma, after accidentally using a defibrillator on himself.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Peter MacNicol knows his way around a painting.
  • Jennifer's boyfriend is nicknamed "Stingo", which happened to be the nickname of Peter MacNicol's character in Sophie's Choice.
• Actually Pretty Funny: During his speech, Bean describes Whistler's Mother (the person, rather than the painting) as "a hideous old bat, who looked like she'd had a cactus lodged up her backside". Grierson momentarily looks perturbed, but decides against saying anything after seeing that General Newton clearly finds the remark amusing.
• Adaptation Expansion: Mr Bean is a lot more articulate in this movie. In the TV show, he rarely spoke and whenever he would say something he would usually mumble his words. In this movie he actually talks in full sentences and even gives an entire speech.
• Adaptational Job Change: In this movie, Bean works as a security guard at the Royal National Gallery, while in the original series he didn't seem to have a day job.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: David's daughter Jennifer and her biker boyfriend. It doesn't work out too well for her.
• Amusement Park of Doom: Bean reprograms a ride at an amusement park to make it more "exciting". The unlucky saps who bought a ticket are subjected to an epilepsy-inducing ride of insanity and some are even catapulted out of their seats.
• Artistic License – Art:
  • In real life, it is unlikely that the Musée d'Orsay would ever part with Whistler's Mother, even for 50 million dollars, as it is one of their most iconic paintings. Even if they did agree to give it back to the United States, it would likely go to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., rather the comparatively much smaller (and fictional) Grierson Gallery — though this comes under Acceptable Breaks from Reality, seeing how the National Gallery of Art has such heavy security that Bean would never be able to break into it.
  • The real Whistler's Mother is somewhat larger than the one seen in the film. It was likely scaled down simply because a life-size replica would have been too unwieldy for Rowan Atkinson to pick up and carry around.
• Ascended Fridge Horror: The movie somehow manages to invert it. Bean destroys a priceless masterpiece, but he covers it up by replacing it with a poster of the same painting, and cue the happy if hilarious ending. As it's really only a short-term solution however, the forgery would undoubtedly be uncovered sometime after the film's events. The original script had apparently already considered this, as it ends with someone noticing the change after the painting is slightly damaged, which didn't make it into the final film.
• Bait-and-Switch Accusation: Just as it seems they've gotten away with the Whistler's Mother coverup, David asks Bean what he did with the original ruined version. Bean pulls an Oh, Crap! expression, but doesn't get a chance to answer as Detective Brutus then lays a hand on David's shoulder and says in a very serious tone "Mr Langley, may I have a word?". David assumes they've been found out and starts babbling about the painting. He's actually there because David's daughter Jennifer got in a motorcycle accident.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Despite his family's protests, David decides to host Bean during his stay in Los Angeles, after being thoroughly impressed with Bean's recommendation letter from the National Gallery. In return for his hospitality, Bean ends up nearly destroying David's home life and career.
• Bowdlerise: Television broadcasts of the film are edited to remove the part where a biker gives Mr. Bean the middle finger and Mr. Bean mimics him, thinking it's a friendly gesture (It's not, troper kids).
  • When aired on ITV and ITV2, David's horrified Cluster F-Bomb upon seeing the destroyed painting was edited and shortened. Also in the same scene during David's breakdown, his comment about he will prosecuted for negligence is completed edited out, due to the mentions of his daughter becoming a prostitute and how David will share a prison cell with Butch McDick.
• Brandishment Bluff: Subverted. Bean does this to the six cops at the Los Angeles airport right after he arrives in America, but purely as a harmless prank to confuse them. Unfortunately, the police take him seriously, pull out their real guns, and force him to surrender his Finger Gun during a tense standoff. Then they arrest him for confusing the officers.
• Brick Joke:
  • At the hospital, Bean runs into the security guard he had drugged earlier.
  • After Bean's speech, David asks him where he put the original Whistler's Mother, but he doesn't get the chance to answer. At the very end, it's revealed that Bean took it home to hang on his bedroom wall.
  • The Flipping the Bird bit comes back again at the very end, when Bean cheerfully gives David's wife and kids the finger as he departs for the airport.
• The Cameo:
  • One of the board members in the opening of the movie is played by Peter Capaldi, who at the time was a recognizable actor in Britain, but is nowadays most known for playing Malcolm Tucker and the Twelfth Doctor.
  • The chairman of the art gallery board is played by John Mills.
  • Teddy, Bean's stuffed toy bear that he often treats as if it's alive, makes a brief appearance at the end of the movie.
  • Burt Reynolds as General Newton, the man who donated the money to purchase Whistler's Mother.
• Captain Obvious: When called upon to make a speech on the painting, Mr Bean's two observations are "it's quite big," and "it's a picture of Whistler's mother."
• Chekhov's Gun: The Whistler's Mother poster seen early in the film, which the guy showing off the gift shop stuff to David makes sure to mention is the same size as the actual painting.
• Cluster F-Bomb: A variation. Upon seeing that Bean totally destroyed Whistler's Mother while he was gone, David lets out a horrified torrent of "Jesus," "Oh God," and other religious incantations/curse words;
  David: OH JESUS! OH GOD! OH JESUS! GOD! OH MARY, MOTHER OF JESUS! JESUS OF NAZARETH!
• Comedic Sociopathy: Deconstructed. David and Bean go to an amusement park in Los Angeles, but he finds the thriller ride simulator so boring that it puts him to sleep. Bean reprograms the ride and disables the safety features so that customers are literally thrown out of their seats at high speed. Unlike the series, the movie attaches realistic consequences to Bean's typical shenanigans: the police promptly arrest him (again!).
• Comically Missing the Point: How Bean describes his job. His employers must have said something along the lines of "Sit in the corner and keep an eye on the paintings," but Bean clearly assumed this meant to simply look at the exhibits, as opposed to looking after them.
• Cringe Comedy: When Bean tries to dry his wet pants with the hand dryer while making suggestive movements, one of the gallery employees comes out of a bathroom stall. They later meet again at Grierson's office in one of the most awkward meetings in movie history.
• Damned by Faint Praise: About the most that Bean can say about Whistler's Mother when he sees it is that it has a "nice frame."
• Darker and Edgier: Though still very goofy overall, this movie has Bean risking more serious repercussions than he's used to (see deconstruction below for details) and there are several jokes that are more adult than the ones on the show, hence the movie's PG-13 rating.
• Deconstruction:
  • Downplayed. Where Mr. Bean's suffered next to no consequences for his antics in the series, they manage to land him in trouble with the authorities at several points in the film, though in keeping with his status as The Fool, he still always manages to get out of these situations through the same brand of antics and offbeat ingenuity that got him into them in the first place. However, Bean's foolishness does have dire consequences for David, nearly costing him his job and his family before Bean sets everything right.
  • It doesn't help that in the TV series, citizens are usually apathetic to his antics. Here? Not so much. In fact, Bean got a lot of belligerent looks from a lot of people throughout the movie due to his antics. Much of this is due to the fact that Bean spends most of the movie in America, where the concept of a Stiff Upper Lip is typically frowned upon and the lack of a culturally-mandated Weirdness Censor results in people being more openly weirded out by those who deviate even slightly from the norm, which doesn't help the almost alien-like Manchild that is Bean.
• Description Cut: Just as the security guy is saying "With the system we've put in here, nothing'll touch that painting short of an earthquake," the viewer can see on the security monitors that Bean is clumsily removing it from its hanger.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Subverted when Mr. Bean is forced to give an improvised speech on the Whistler's Mother painting. After fumbling for a bit, he handles the speech quite well, although it lacks any meaningful content. General Newton and much of the audience just appreciate Bean's straightforward remarks on The Power of Family. The characters who might have been offended take it as dryly comical ribbing at their earlier request not to have a boring lecture of art history, and maybe insert a joke or two into the speech, since they assumed Bean to be a stereotypical British academic.
• Dinner with the Boss: A few days into Bean's stay at David's house, David's boss Mr. Grierson comes for a visit. David had completely forgotten about this and he and Bean struggle to come up with a meal to impress them. It ends in a complete disaster, starting with Bean offering the guests a sliced onion as an appetizer, and trying to fast-bake a Thanksgiving turkey in the microwave using Oven Logic. It explodes.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: After David learned that Bean isn't actually a doctor, he tries to ask Bean if Leonardo da Vinci was an American basketball player to figure out whether Bean knew anything about art. Considering what they're talking about at the time, most sane people would realize it's a trick question and would immediately answer no, even if they knew next to nothing about Leonardo and basketball. Yet Bean is blissfully clueless that it's not even a genuine question and innocently answers yes, which drives David into a mild depression for the rest of the night.
• Drowning My Sorrows: After Bean destroys Whistler's Mother, he and David hit the bar to commiserate the situation. Later on, after David gets Exiled to the Couch on the night before the ruined painting is due to be revealed, a depressed Bean can be seen in the kitchen, sipping milk from the carton with a straw.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Kevin hanging out with Bean while the latter is up late at night and despondent over the destruction he's caused over the past few days — during which, he tells him that he has "some great posters of Cindy Crawford on [his] wall" – is what gives Bean the idea to use a modified poster of Whistler's Mother to replace the destroyed painting.
• Fish Out of Water: The film's plot, at its core, is essentially this. It's more apparent for anyone who's familiar with the TV series; while Bean is tolerated in his native England, his antics get him arrested within minutes of landing in the United States.
• Flipping the Bird: Upon being given the gesture by a biker he annoys, Bean misinterprets it as a friendly one (note that Britain typically uses an "inverted V-sign"— that is, a peace sign with the back of the hand facing outward— in place of the middle finger), and then proceeds to give it to everyone he sees.
• Format-Specific Joke: The film ends with a post-credits gag of Mr. Bean walking back into view, saying that he stays after the credits as well.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Get a close look at Bean's passport and you'll see that his first name is actually "Mr."
• The Friend Nobody Likes: The board at the Royal National Gallery, except for the chairman, wishes to fire Bean for being the worst employee in the gallery's history with the secretary being overjoyed at the idea. The reason Bean was sent to America in the first place is that it's an alternative to firing him because the chairman threatened to resign otherwise.
• From Bad to Worse: Bean tries to use lacquer thinner to remove the ink stain he's left on the painting, which he succeeds at – but at the cost of also removing the paint underneath.
• Happy Ending: By the end of the film, Bean manages to fix what he destroyed: Whistler's Mother and David's home life. The actual unveiling of the painting is a complete success, in part because of Bean's inane yet touching and sincere speech. On top of that, he saves the life of a police detective who openly despised him, and even gets invited to visit David and his family again––"in the fairly distant future."
• Hope Spot: Bean successfully cleans the snot and ink stains off Whistler's Mother using paint thinner, revealing clean unblemished paint underneath... only for the paint itself to start dissolving a few seconds later, irreparably destroying the masterpiece.
• Horrible Judge of Character: The chairman of the board of Royal National Gallery is protective of Mr. Bean, insisting that he remains employed and threatens to resign if the board tries to fire him, referring to him as a "splendid young man" even though Bean is considered the worst employee in the gallery's history for sleeping on the job and annoying his colleagues. This is before his disastrous actions at the Grierson Gallery.
• Idiot Ball: David allows a total stranger into his home for two months purely on the strength of a glowing recommendation letter from England's National Gallery. If he had done any checking with his colleagues in the fine art world, he wouldn't have found a single person who had even heard of Bean or would corroborate the outrageous claims in the Gallery's letter. ("A man whose incontrovertible genius dwarfs [your] own meager talents.") Furthermore, once Bean arrives, it takes David a pretty long time before he finally forces him to admit who he really is. He tolerates Bean getting arrested twice, embarrassing him at work, scaring away his family, baking his underwear in the oven, and blowing up an entire turkey in the microwave before he thinks to ask if Bean is really a doctor of fine art.
• Intergenerational Friendship: David's wife and teenage daughter are horrified of Bean after their first meeting, but his preteen son Kevin immediately takes a liking to him.
• It's All About Me: A lot of Mr. Bean's attitude for the first half of the movie shows that he only cares about his well-being or how he looks (such as when he's more concerned with his wet pants rather than the board meeting between David and his colleagues) and how he's insensitive to David's rocky marriage and career. Even after David learned that he's not a doctor, Bean doesn't care about what David thinks of him when David asks him to act rationally. It's really not until he ruins the painting that Bean is starting to realize how destructive his behaviour to other people really is.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While the board at the Royal National Gallery dislike Bean and are being rather underhand at wanting to get rid of him, they are not wrong that Bean is a terrible employee.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Mr. Bean, as per the TV show.
• Karma Houdini: Bean does at least have a couple of brushes with the law, but he still escapes any serious consequences for his actions, particularly his destruction of Whistler's Mother. However, destroying the painting was due to a series of accidents — Bean trying to clean dust of the painting and sneezing, trying to wipe the painting clean when unfortunately ink had leaked on his handkerchief, etc. — and if it had been revealed, it's pointed out David would have most likely been fired and/or prosecuted for negligence.
• Lack of Empathy: After Bean sabotages "Ride of Doom", one of the guests tries to hold onto Bean's chair. Bean, annoyed, just shoves him away.
• Laxative Prank: Mr. Bean does this to the night watchman at the Grierson Gallery to create a diversion so he can slip in and replace the ruined painting. To buy extra time, he also switches out the key to the men's room.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Bean's stealth mission to the Gallery.
• Magical Defibrillator: Subverted. Bean manages to wake Jennifer from a deep sleep after her motorcycle accident with one of these––by touching the electrodes together. The shock launches Bean into the air, and he lands on Jennifer, waking her up.
• Meaningful Name: Zig-zagged. According to IMDB, Grierson's head of marketing and merchandising is "Walter Merchandise." In the film itself, Grierson clearly refers to him as "Walter Huntley."
• Merchandise-Driven: Inverted. For the unveiling of Whistler's Mother, the Grierson Gallery has an entire range of crass tie-in merchandise prepared: clothes, accessories, toys, snacks, and erotic posters.
• Mistaken for Profound: When Bean has to describe his job to someone, he states that his job is to "sit and look at the paintings." The audience at the Whistler's Mother unveiling ceremony is impressed by it, thinking that his job is philosophical in nature and involves analyzing things like the message and emotions the artist was trying to convey with their art, when in reality, all Bean meant that he was a museum security guard and not a very good one at that. Not helping the fact is Bean's aforementioned description. He clearly isn't aware that his job is to look after the paintings.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The whiplash is only accentuated by Wet Wet Wet's "Yesterday" playing in the background, only to be interrupted by David and Bean screaming.
  • When Bean successfully cleans the snot and ink off Whistler's Mother with paint thinner, he has a face of intense relief and gratefulness while hopeful music gently plays. He turns away briefly to put the paint thinner back on the shelf, a Scare Chord plays as it's revealed the painting itself is dissolving and Bean enters full-blown panic (and for an art-lover is legitimately hard to watch).
  • After rushing to get the destroyed painting back to its viewing area, he reluctantly shows it to David, where a comical face has been drawn over the blank canvas and David has a hilarious breakdown.
• Mountain of Food: An easily-missed sight gag during the bar scene is the enormous pile of peanut shells in front of Bean.
• Musicalis Interruptus: In the process of waiting for the shower to warm up, David is silently lamenting over his wife and kids vacating his house because of Mr. Bean, which is set to Wet Wet Wet's "Yesterday". David then prepares to enter the shower, then "Yesterday" stops when it turns out Bean had got in the shower first.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Bean falls asleep on the job at the National Gallery and slowly slides out of his chair in the same way he did during the Boring Religious Service in the pilot episode of the series.
  • Bean's sleepy reaction to the Ride of Doom calls back to the roller coaster sequence from "Mind the Baby, Mr Bean."
  • The destruction of Whistler's Mother is reminiscent of an unaired sketch called "The Library," where Bean damages and then destroys an old, rare book.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After his antics not only get David to be estranged from his family but risking his job as well, Bean becomes dejected. He manages to fix both issue by the end of the film.
• Nervous Wreck: David Langley spends most of the film sliding deeper into despair, after all he did was trust the National Gallery and believe in Bean.
• Not That Kind of Doctor: Exaggerated. While standing around waiting in the hospital, Bean is dragged along by a nurse to perform a surgery after she notices the "Dr. Bean" label on his suit. Bean is too taken aback to correct her, but then again, he's not even a non-medical Doctor.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • After using lacquer thinner to clean the ink stain off the face of Whistler's Mother, Mr. Bean has this reaction when he sees that the area melts into a bubbly mess. His reaction gets worse as he tries to stop the paint from melting, but only defaces the painting in progress. David is also extremely horrified when Bean shows him the ruined painting (as well as his "restoration") and is immediately worried about what's going to happen if the gallery staff, the public and General Newton find out on the day of the unveiling.
    • There's a great deleted scene of David becoming even more hysterical after Bean suggests a way to hide the damage: a "Do Not Enter" sign on the door.
  • Mr. Bean gets immensely nervous when told he's about to give an analytical speech about Whistler's Mother.
  • Once Bean's speech is over, Detective Brutus arrives and wishes an audience with Bean and Langley, with the latter two believing their tampering with Whistler's Mother have been caught.
  • A silent one from Detective Brutus when he wakes up in the middle of his surgery and realises that his surgeon is Bean. He just faints from the shock.
• Oven Logic: Bean and David try to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey (which normally takes about five hours) for an impromptu dinner with some guests by stuffing it into a microwave, and setting it at about 20 minutes at the highest setting. It explodes.
• Paper-Bag Popping: In a gag reused from the series, Bean tries to amuse a boy sitting next to him on the plane by blowing up his airsickness bag and popping it to wake up the sleeping passenger in front. While Bean tries in vain to blow up the bag, the kid gets sick from turbulence and throws up in his bag. Bean sees the full bag, thinks the boy blew it up for him, and pops it. In the TV version, the show ends before the pop; here, we see a close-up of Bean's reaction to the result, with bits of vomit flying by from the bottom of the frame.
• Patriotic Fervor: General Newton, who's only memorable quote is him blatantly admitting that he doesn't have any interest in art. He just bought Whistler's Mother because he's disgusted at the idea of Europeans having any claim over America's greatest painting.
• Phony Degree: An inversion. In order to foist him upon the Americans for a few months, the National Gallery of Britain and two of their prominent art historians give Bean a glowing recommendation, so the Americans assume he is an academic doctor. Bean himself is oblivious and does try to correct people, but in the end he stops bothering.
  Bean: I'm Dr. Bean... apparently.
• Picture-Perfect Pose: Parodied; Mr. Bean intentionally makes the same face as his Unflattering ID Photo after he's shown making a more normal face.
• Prison Rape: David hysterically imagining getting prosecuted for negligence.
  David: Then I go to jail... my wife leaves me... my daughter becomes a prostitute... I wind up on death row, sharing a cell with Butch McDick!
• Product Placement: Peanut M&Ms appear in many scenes throughout the film, and feature prominently during the set piece at the hospital.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Bean virtually destroys a priceless work of art, replaces it with a cheap copy and then steals it as well, yet ends up as a hero for it. Granted, the only other person aware of what he's done is David, who isn't exactly pleased about it, but can't say anything as this would at best just cause him to lose his job, and at worst see him facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Mr. Bean is sent away to the unveiling of Whistler's Mother in the United States at the urging of most of the British National Gallery's board. This is done as an alternative to firing him, which they cannot do because the chairman of the board is actually fond of Bean.
• Replaced with Replica: Bean secretly replaces the damaged Whistler's Mother painting with a full-size poster of itself.
• Running Gag:
  • Over the course of the film, "He's a genius, right?" becomes the standard phrase when people question Bean's ridiculous behavior.
  • Bean's underwear. When he first arrives at David's house, he's drying his underwear in the oven. After David's family moves out, Bean is seen ironing a few pairs. Finally, during the night mission to the gallery, he uses a pair of underwear on his head as a flashlight holder.
  • David and Bean have several conversations in the car throughout the film, with each one progressively deteriorating in tone. The first one has David respectfully addressing Bean as "sir" and "Doctor" and calling him "brilliant." By their last conversation, he just tells Bean to shut up when he tries talking.
  • The "novelisation" of the film Mr. Bean's Scrapbook has Bean resorting to increasingly desperate measures to finish writing the whole story as his typewriter, pens, etc, keep breaking, culminating in him writing with his own blood.
• Scare Chord: When the painting itself starts to dissolve after Bean's attempts to clean it, a long, shrill and anxiety-inducing chord is heard.
• Self-Plagiarism:
  • The opening scene of Bean hurriedly mixing all of the ingredients of his morning coffee into his mouth on his way out the door is recreated from a scene in Rowan Atkinson's first starring role on the TV special Canned Laughter.
  • The airplane scene featuring the young boy and the vomit bag is borrowed from "Mr Bean Rides Again."
  • In the American version of the film, the turkey scene is borrowed from "Merry Christmas, Mr Bean."
• Shout-Out:
  • A rather obscure one for non-baseball fans. The announcer's patter in the baseball game that's on the TV as Bean and David drink in the bar — "Smith corks one down the line!" — is Jack Buck's famous call from Game 5 of the 1985 National League Championship Series, rerecorded by an actor.
  • Bean accidentally dropping an M&M into the police chief's body undergoing surgery heavily resembles the "Junior Mint" episode of Seinfeld, which involves a similar situation, but with the titular candy instead.
• Shower of Awkward: David turns on the shower and then sits on his bed for a while contemplating his worries. When he enters the shower, he finds that Bean decided to take one in the meantime. They both freak out, but David is forced to answer the phone while all this is happening. Unfortunately for him, Bean answers it first and when the caller wants David, he cheerfully states that "yes, he's just here in the shower with me!".
• Smarter Than You Look: Due to his strange behavior and immaturity, Bean seems to have the mentality and overall intellect of an elementary school kid,^note Word of God has it that Atkinson normally played Bean as a nine year old boy. but he shows a surprising level of intelligence in a couple of scenes, such as his ability to reprogram the amusement park ride settings, and his clever (and temporarily successful) effort to salvage the damaged painting with a poster and some everyday household items.
• The Speechless: Bean has dialogue, unlike in the series. He's still not very talkative, except for his speech and The Stinger.
• The Stinger: After the end credits, Mr. Bean passes by, telling the audience that just like them, he also stays until the credits finish. He then walks off-screen to the right and comes back, stating that it's now the end of the movie, and tells them to leave whenever they want to. When he leaves again, he goes back the other way, as this was where he was initially.
• Suddenly Speaking: Mr. Bean has changed from being a combination of The Voiceless and The Unintelligible to speaking freely, and gave a speech before a crowd near the end. The premise of the movie sort of forces it, though, since Bean interacts with several characters who speak directly to him (no one ever really did in the original program).
• Supreme Chef: Subverted during the dinner party by Bean. His idea of a master chef is a chef's hat made of newspaper (with the word "CHEF" written on it in red marker) and an appetizer plate of sliced raw onion.
• Took a Level in Badass: Bean spends much of the first half creating problems with his foolish antics and nearly destroys an innocent man's life in the process. Then he fixes it by hatching a plan to break into the art gallery and stealing and replacing the original painting without anyone else being the wiser.
• Unflattering ID Photo: Subverted. Bean's passport photo is deliberately unflattering because he chose to make a very silly face.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The board of the Royal National Gallery sends Bean to America as an alternative to firing him but they never imagined he would destroy an artistic masterpiece or almost ruin someone else's life.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Bean with David Langley. David constantly bickers with Bean because of the latter's bizarre antics, but they eventually become good friends. Bean describes David as his "best friend" in his big speech, and David admits to his wife Allison that despite everything that's happened, he's grown fond of Bean. Bean even gives him a Bear Hug before going back to England.
  David: I don't know what to say about Bean. He is clearly a force ten disaster area... but God help me... I like him.
• We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: As usual for Mr. Bean, after a series of misunderstandings, he ends up in an emergency room in a doctor's outfit, at which point the other doctors and nurses expect him to retrieve a bullet from the police chief's body. As soon as he does (before and after some Squick), amazingly, his flat lining vital signs immediately stabilize, at which point he regains consciousness, and is apparently going to be just fine afterward. Cue applause and exaggerated swooning from the doctors.
• Wet Blanket Wife: David's wife Allison isn't all that unreasonable in not wanting Bean to stay with them, but immediately taking the kids to her mother's place and later threatening to leave David for good over the matter does seem like a bit of overreaction. Even worse that she already acts like this before actually meeting Bean. (David implies during the bar scene that their marriage already wasn't going well, even before Bean's arrival.) Allison changes her tune at the end of the film after Bean saves her daughter Jennifer, who was in a coma following a motorcycle accident.