Synopsis: Comedy as a genre in OTT platform got deconstructed through the latest offering on Netflix, Man vs Bee starring Rowan Atkinson, whom we all know as Mr. Bean.
There would hardly be a movie lover who is not a fan of Mr. Bean when it comes to comedy with a deadpan expression and such is the fan following for Mr. Bean that during channel surfing whenever one comes across any show where Mr. Bean is featuring the surfing gets a dead break. The man incidentally in the real world is known as Rowan Atkinson. The same happened with me while searching for a movie to see on Netflix and I saw Mr. Bean there and found out that it is a new show featuring him known as MAN vs. BEE.
May be, Netflix would have decided to leverage this quotient associated with Mr. Atkinson aka Bean to come up with this web series called Man vs Bee which is a new genre in OTT show as but for the first episode which runs for 20 minutes, all other episodes are of 10 minutes only!
To be able to carry a show on his 67 years young shoulder with a Bee being the other protagonist along with a dog, speaks volumes about the acting prowess of Atkinson. MAN vs BEE is a saga or rather story of a face-off between a home sitter and a bee who also tries to intrude into his space and how through a series of gaffes he is able to conquer the bee. Actually, Atkinson has excelled and built up his acting persona singularly on his talent and his talent alone.
The antics shown in the movie are one way or the other seen earlier as well, especially the repair work of the painting. In MAN vs BEE also, Atkinson repairs a painting which he had done with a panache in one of his most successful films BEAN where Atkinson had repaired WHISTLER’S MOTHER an 1871 oil on canvas painting by American born painter James McNeil Whistler.
MAN vs BEE is a hilarious take off on the modern gadgets as well that are slowly becoming a part of the modern life and underline the fact that simple living still is the best living and all the trappings of technology that are permeating into our day-to-day life, rather than easing our living are making it complex. For instance, the burglary alarm that goes off repeatedly as the password is forgotten or the sensor driven cupboards and drawers which is a difficult proposition for an old man to operate. Alternatively, for that matter the gesture-controlled faucet, which must have haunted most of us at the point of first interface with this gadget!
In his quest to conquer the bee Atkinson brings the whole house down and, in a way, also harks back to Gore Verbinski’s 1997 film- MOUSE HUNT where the lead protagonists shred the whole house to pieces to snuff out a rat. In the same manner Atkinson also saws, with a maniac glee, a Jaguar E-type supposedly to squash the bee.
Indian cinema had experimented with the genre of a housefly in arguably one of the most famous films MAKHEE and perhaps after the success of MAN vs BEE somebody needs to bring out a Hindi version of a conquest with member of an Arthropoda phylum. Amitabh Bachchan had an encounter with the cockroach in KASME VAADE and may be he could do an encore with a Hindi OTT script.
