My love affair with the city of Darwin (that's a weird metaphor, but I'm gonna stick with it) took another hit today. I faced the long march through town to the state government services office to renew my driver's licence. After so many years of strategically getting it renewed while I was at home, I am now stuck with a South Australian licence. As Darth Vader put it in Episode 3:

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

I am genuinely upset about this. That piece of plastic was about the last piece of Darwin I had left. To distract myself I took myself to the movies (at first I was reluctant to go with myself. I have my reputation to consider, and people might start to talk. But after I flashed myself that trademark roguish smile, how could I refuse?) and saw Mr Bean's holiday. To tell you the truth, I went along fully expecting it to be crap, but I was pleasantly surprised. Obviously no movie length production is going to be a shade of the old Mr Bean TV shows. You couldn't get away with just being dumb for an hour and a half (Although Jim Carrey has made quite a career out of it).

No, you need some sort of plot, which really wasn't what the Mr Bean of old was a about. Nonetheless, despite having a plot the movie worked quite well (what?). It was more like strange situations which were amusing in themselves, made funnier by Rowan Atkinsons' amazing physicalisation. Old school Bean was just normal situations with an idiot walking around in them, being weird. It worked because, and only because Atkinson is such an amazing performer.

And the point of this brief film review? I don't know.

Far from home (and feeling it)

Garry with 2 Rs

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