The Library (1990 TV Short) User Reviews

The Library

[0U · 14 March 2020]

The Library is a scene which never appeared on episodes. 10/10 great AIR DATE....Possibly November 1990 WRITTEN BY......Olivier Jean-Marie DIRECTED BY.....François Reczulski ............................. spoiler . . . The first scene starts with Mr. Bean entering a rare book library, where he reads a rare tome that must be handled with gloves. Soon after he uses a pencil and a crayon to copy a page of the book by shading on a piece of tracing paper, he sneezes, and the tracing paper slips away. He does not notice this, continuing to use a crayon for shading, but on the book instead of the tracing paper. When he finally notices this, he attempts to remove the crayon marks - first by erasing, and then by using the correction fluid, but eventually ends up tearing out the pages he has defiled. To neaten up the stubs of the pages he has torn out, he uses a box-cutter knife, but does not realise that while doing so, he cuts other pages. His final solution is to swap his book with that of someone else at his table; this plan is working (Bean leaves, and the librarian discovers that the book the other visitor has is damaged), but then Bean returns to retrieve his Dennis the Menace and Gnasher bookmark from his original book and is subsequently caught red-handed.

Beanginnings

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 28 August 2017]

"The Library" is a British live action short film from 1990, so this one is already over a quarter of a century old. And as such, it is one of the very earliest appearances by actor Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean, the character that became his career-defining role after it all seemed like it would be Blackadder. Here Mr. Bean is at a library studying a priceless book, but he manages to cause enough mayhem that the book is almost destroyed at the end of the film and his attempts to repair it and eventually blame another guy cause an even bigger mess. Atkinson is very good in here and I am not surprised at all that Mr. Bean became so famous so quickly. The story is also decent, even if the film could have been 2-3 minutes shorter without some of the less insignificant stuff. But that's not the main problem here. The main problem is the annoying laughter really as they already burst into laughter when Bean has a hiccup. I know it's a library, but it just isn't (that) funny, sorry. Nonetheless there are also some pretty hilarious moments in here, especially at the end. That's why I believe it is among the better, but not best, stuff Mr. Bean has brought us. Worth checking out.