Jacques Tati
1963
114 minutes
You are filled with dread going into this film, knowing that Monsieur Hulot is often compared to Mr. Bean. You like Rowan Atkinson, particularly in installments of the Blackadder series, but Mr. Bean goes through you like a knife. Remembering also the French affinity for Jerry Lewis, you are ready for this film to be unbearable.
To your amazement, the film is actually very, very funny. There's plenty of slapstick, but it is much less vulgar than you expected. More of it is running jokes and clever chain reactions, much less cringey and grotesque than you had braced yourself for.
You generally don't do well at the beach. You are notorious for never wearing shorts, no matter how hot it is. Let's just say you don't tan well. You're also known for never wearing any kind of open-toed shoes. At the beach you will grudgingly swap your boots for Crocs just to keep sand from getting in your regular footwear, and if you're getting in the water you'll put on some swim trunks under your jeans and strip down to them to splash around in the water.
Once when you were a child your father took you to the beach in Florida. At the beginning of the day he made sure you were slathered in sunscreen, but never thought about the need to reapply this throughout the day. By the end of the day you had a severe sunburn, bad enough to peel and leave large, juicy pus-filled blisters which needed to be popped with a needle sterilized over a cigarette lighter. These then scabbed over and itched and left you in agony, which was (incorrectly) described as sun poisoning but in reality was just a very severe sunburn. Regular applications of Noxzema provided some relief at least. This experience didn't leave you with a lot of enthusiasm for frolicking at the beach.
Time to choose something different: