I don’t know what my kids have against Mr. Bean, but it’s got to stop.

Tomorrow I want to take the kids to the movies. Ordinarily we do something outside on Sundays: miniature golf, hiking, or shuttling comic books from storage locations in the garage to storage locations in my home office. But the past two days we’ve had rains of Biblical proportions, weather far too inclement for the safe transport of comic books. Hence, the movies.

On all 30 screens in Burbank, there is a grand total of one family friendly movie. Luckily for me, it’s “Mr. Bean’s Holiday.” Imagine my delight! To me, Mr. Bean is the cure for whatever ails you. Rowan Atkinson is a gifted clown who with this character has staked out his own territory somewhere between Stan Laurel, Harry Langdon, and Jacques Tati. So I showed the trailer to my two younger kids, a boy aged 5 and and a girl of 9, in an effort to whip up excitement about tomorrow morning’s excursion. Here it is:

My little boy grew belligerent and defiant, swearing that he would not be seeing Mr. Bean and I couldn’t make him. My daughter grew tearful at the prospect, then started to shake with convulsive crying. The last time I saw these same reactions from them was when I told them zombies were outside.

This reaction mystifies me. We enjoy Laurel & Hardy, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton together; are those acts more preferable because they’re in black and white (and sometimes silent)? Is Mr. Bean too threatening in some way? Or is he so utterly uncool that the kids think that by suggesting this movie I’m talking down to them?

This reminds me of my experience seeing the wonderful Jerry Lewis movie “Hardly Working” in 1981; when I told friends and co-workers how insanely funny it was, they just shook their heads and walked away. The difference here is that I hold all the keys — to the house, to the cars, to things like food and allowance. If I wanted, I could just stuff them into the car tomorrow and take them to see this movie no matter their wishes, except for two things:

1. they’d probably ruin my enjoyment of the movie; and
2. I can’t get out of my head my daughter’s final words, said in a small sad voice before I packed both her and her little brother off to bed: “Please… don’t make us see Mr. Bean….”

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Now playing: Bryan Ferry – What Goes On
via FoxyTunes

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 11:29 pm and is filed under On being, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.