Mutants, madness and Mr Bean

You either love Mr Bean, or you hate him. Our household is divided right down the centre.

I happen to think Rowan Atkinson's silent slapstick on the 1990s TV series was a stroke of genius - but holding our attention for a full-length big-screen adventure is another thing entirely.

While Bean's first big-screen appearance, a full 10 years ago, confidently managed to pull it off, his latest offering, Mr Bean's Holiday (PG), is rather more touch and go.

The screenplay is a licence to unleash the usual array of set-pieces, from the familiar (Bean using matchsticks to keep his eyes open and getting his tie caught in a vending machine) to dazzling sequences of pure physical comedy and running gags.

Lady Luck unexpectedly smiles on Bean when he wins a dream holiday to Cannes in the church raffle, along with a nifty digital camera. With his tiny suitcase packed and his documents safely in the pocket of his blazer, he ventures boldly into the French capital.

From the moment he steps off the train, chaos spreads throughout Paris. Bean eventually finds his way to the Gare de Lyon and boards the train to the south coast, but not before separating an award-winning Russian film director from his 10-year-old son.

Taking charge of the situation, as only Mr Bean can, the Englishman abroad tries to help the youngster but only succeeds in losing his suitcase, money and documents – and then the boy.

Stumbling on to the set of a big-budget yoghurt commercial, Bean then hooks up with pretty actress Sabine (Emma de Caunes), who is driving to Cannes for the premiere of her film. Little does she know what she's letting herself in for.

Some of the jokes aren't particularly funny first time, let alone the fourth, but the childlike innocence and unwavering optimism of hapless Bean, and his ability to scrape triumph from the snarling jaws of defeat, keep us on his side.

With its obvious tributes to Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin overtones, Mr Bean's Holiday is a lot of old fashioned fun.

But there are very few moments when you actually laugh out loud at his exploits, and the gags miss their targets almost as many times as they hit.

Rubber-faced Atkinson maintains a look of bemusement throughout, while de Caunes is luminous in support.

As a final hurrah for Mr Bean – which this surely must be – he manages to go out on a high. But only just.

The other big family offering for the Easter holidays is Meet The Robinsons (U).

Disney's latest state-of-the-art, computer-animated feature is a triumph of style over substance, and technical might over emotional subtlety.

To say that the film is madcap and zany would be an understatement – it heaves at the seams with more weird characters, plot twists, clever contraptions and ideas than can be comfortably contained in 101 minutes.

If the protagonists were remotely engaging, watching the film would be an exhausting experience. But the screenwriters pull the film in so many different directions, and us with it, that this fast and frenzied time-travelling yarn unfolds as a blur.

Orphaned boy genius Lewis has a passion for technology and is completely immersed in his fantasy world of ingenious devices and gizmos. He has little time to charm potential adoptive parents.

Convinced that his future happiness depends on tracking down his biological mother, Lewis creates a Memory Scanner to extract long-buried memories of the parent he has never known.

The first demonstration goes spectacularly awry after a mysterious figure called Bowler Hat Guy sabotages the scanner, before taking it for his own nefarious purposes. A crazy ride.

Fans of the bloodthirsty slasher movie genre will want to lap up The Hills Have Eyes 2 (18).

Last year the unfortunate Carter clan strayed into a mutants' lair during a family holiday in the desert and were devoured one-by-one. This time a unit of National Guards and their gruff commanding officer head into the same nuclear-damaged terrain on a routine assignment to deliver supplies to a team of scientists but soon come under attack from the cannibals.

To make matters worse, the only escape route is down into the mines, home to the mutants, where you just know that danger lurks snarling in every dank, shadowy corner.

It doesn't scrimp on the graphic dismemberment, imagining some very creative and gruesome deaths for the attractive cast, including one sequence that brings a horrific new meaning to the notion of "pulling someone's leg".

If you liked films such as The Descent, you'll tolerate this. Just don't expect it to be in quite the same league.

Possibly the pick of the holiday week's movies in Shropshire is The Last Mimzy (15), described in the tagline as the best family fantasy since E.T. That's rather overstating it, but it's innocently charming nohetheless.

Jo Wilder (Joely Richardson) takes her 10-year-old son Noah (Chris O'Neil) and precocious five-year-old daughter Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) to a house on the coast for the holidays where they stumble upon a strange metallic box full of objects with magical powers.

It allows them to see the world from a completely different perspective, learning how to control and manipulate the forces of nature.

Adapted from a science fiction short story written more than 60 years ago, The Last Mimzy is a bemusing, whimsical but ultimately charming fantasy. Newcomers O'Neil and Wryn are both terrific, untouched by self-consciousness in front of the camera, generating a believable screen chemistry as siblings who forge a magical bond.

This beguiling film trumpets childhood innocence as something to be protected from the harsh realities of a 21st century world obsessed with technology and self-gratification.

It demands a complete suspension and has its moments of unintentional hilarity, but the dialogue has the sense to acknowledge our cynicism by poking fun at many of the characters.

By Carl Jones

* Seen anything particularly good - or bad - at the movies recently. Email me at cjones@shropshirestar.co.uk.