10 Movies Within Movies Everyone Wanted To See
1. Playback Time - Mr. Bean's Holiday
It still doesn't seem real that Willem Dafoe played a major supporting role in Mr. Bean's Holiday, as pretentious American filmmaker Carson Clay, who bring his new movie Playback Time to the Cannes Film Festival.
The thing is, as a parody of self-regarding "arthouse" cinema made for festival audiences and few others, it toes the line quite perfectly, whereby it manages to both make fun of its subject yet still seem like a genuinely interesting film.
Yes, it's a card-carrying vanity project for star-director Clay - the opening titles namedrop Clay's name four times - complete with languorous shots of him walking around and giving portentous voiceover monologues. But you know what?
It's also genuinely beautifully shot, and Dafoe's such a damn compelling actor that he can't help but make that silly, flowery prose actually seem pretty intriguing.
Ultimately Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) hijacks the screening and splices his own holiday footage into the movie, and once the crowd lauds Clay's "film" as affectingly experimental, he decides to just roll with it rather than kick up a fuss.
As hilarious as the whole send-up is, it's also something a lot of people would actually love to watch.