Man vs Baby featuring Rowan Atkinson is a sequel to Man vs Bee of 2022.
Atkinson tries to use his Bean charm, but the script doesn't add much to it at all.
This British Christmas Core tries to ride on nostalgia but fails.
It’s that time of the year when everything is just a bit too much: keeping up appearances, dealing with family, friends, making plans and living up to them and sometimes, being kept away from plans—as Trevor Bingley (Rowan Atkinson) in Netflix’s Man vs. Baby is. In such a scenario, your own children can often get on your nerves, so imagine having to watch someone else’s baby. Except Bingley, channeling Mr. Bean, has an earnest nonchalance about it, because this is not the worst thing that has happened to him. After being seen growing as a family over the years, he is now separated from his wife and daughter, who have their own plans for Christmas. His ex has a rich boyfriend, while Bingley is getting the sack from his job as a caretaker, with the final task of helping with the school’s Nativity play.
Once everyone’s gone and he is locking up, he finds an infant in a bassinet left on the school’s premises (earlier mistaken for a child brought in by a parent to portray Jesus in the manger). He’s literally left holding the (mostly CGI and creepy) baby, even as he makes his way to his new job of being a house sitter for a posh penthouse in London.
Atkinson epitomises the lonely hearts club in the festival season—the slump of the shoulders, the waning of his excitement upon discovering that he is going to be all alone for Christmas, the faraway hope in his eyes when his daughter calls, the exhausted grin he pastes on when the infant cries for his attention. He delivers, even as the cliché ridden script doesn’t
A sort of sequel to Man vs. Bee (2022), this four-part series, co-written and co-created by Atkinson and William Davies, tries to recreate the old-school Christmas nostalgia, but amuses only in spurts. The script relies too heavily on Atkinson to carry every misjudged, foolish situation. His efforts are wasted on a series of unfortunate events featuring unremarkable humour (a cork is subbed in for a pacifier, silk scarves for nappies), and while he makes a run to the supermarket for baby food, buying nappies is not on his agenda till he has run out of silk scarves.
Some of the situations would have given me anxiety, like a decade ago: leaving a baby alone in a very baby-unfriendly home or the baby falling into a garbage chute and randomly popping out. But what I couldn’t fathom is Bingley making a run for the supermarket and not thinking he should be buying baby clothes or diapers first, instead deliberating on baby weight and what jar/flavor of pureed food he should buy.
Reliving the Bean klutziness is rewarding for Atkinson, to a point where he doesn’t even have to try too hard. The scene of him swinging from side to side while being explained his duties as a house-sitter is hilarious—he is trying to be discreet about the baby in his backpack and trying to rock it to sleep, so it won’t be revealed.
It’s predictable, old-fashioned, even cheesy, but the emotional moments still linger, as Bingley encounters various people in his escapes in and out of his posh building. You are not exactly at the edge of your chair, wondering what will become of the baby and which family is being tormented by the loss of their baby—or worse, unbothered.
Cadbury’s Heroes are cloyingly planted on multiple occasions and aside from saying, “This part of the feature is sponsored by Cadbury’s”, the in-film promotion is as blatant as it gets. Once, Bingley hands a packet of these chocolates to a homeless couple, saying, they are “really nice, actually!” I gagged.
On the whole, Man vs. Baby is tepid British Christmas Core at best, and even Mr. Bean cannot exactly save it, slapstick baby notwithstanding. But what stands out is that despite everything, it is only the inconvenient baby who makes Bingley feel truly ‘seen’.
