Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie (1997)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Biographies-Cast & Crew Booklet
Rating
Year Of Production	1997
Running Time	86
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Sided	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Mel Smith
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Rowan Atkinson Peter MacNicol Pamela Reed Harris Yulin Burt Reynolds
Case	Super Jewel
RPI	$29.95	Music	Howard Goodall

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired German German for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    So how does Mr Bean translate from the small screen to the big one? Well, I have mixed feelings about this. I remember seeing this movie at the cinema and being quite unimpressed - I felt it was overlong, too Americanised, not funny enough, and Mr Bean spoke far too much for my liking. Second time around, on DVD, I found that I enjoyed it considerably more. I still only got a few chuckles out of it, but it dragged far less than in the cinema.

    The situation around which this comedy is hung is that Mr Bean is a security guard for a British art gallery. He is by far their worst employee, but the gallery is in a position where they cannot sack him. However, they are able to send him to America for three months to accompany the return of the painting of Whistler's Mother to an American gallery. Mr Bean gets into many, many unfortunate situations, some funnier than others, and the ending is too syrupy-sweet but overall I was moderately entertained.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced. The flip side of the DVD carries Full Frame version of the movie.

    The transfer was quite sharp and clear. Shadow detail was good in the few dark scenes.

    The colours were quite vivid and highly saturated throughout this transfer as a result of the production design. They are well rendered on the DVD, with never a trace of chroma noise or colour bleeding.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of trivial aliasing in a few scenes. Film artefacts were quite few and far between.

Audio

    Dialogue was always clear and easily understood, however, this movie suffers from some very slipshod ADR work, with individual lines going in and out of sync, and sound quality changing from line to line. This significantly improved in the latter half of the movie.

    The music is a combination of suitable comedy music and old standards, and appropriately offsets the on-screen action.

     The surround channels were used for music and for some limited effects and ambience, creating a surprisingly enveloping soundfield. I really didn't expect much from the rear channels in this movie, and whilst there wasn't a lot, there was a lot more surround presence than I expected.

    The .1 channel was used to support the music and the odd special effect.

Menu

Cast & Crew Biographies

    The Region 1 version of this DVD misses out on;

• 16x9 enhancement

    The Region 4 version of this DVD misses out on;

• Music Video-I Love L.A.-OMC

• Theatrical Trailer

    There is no contest here - the Region 4 is the version of choice by virtue of its 16x9 enhancement.

    The video quality is of high quality with only trivial problems.

    The audio quality is of acceptable quality, but the sloppy ADR work is disappointing with lines in-and-out of sync, especially in the first half of the movie.

    The extras are very limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall