Mr. Bean and Localization

Mr. Bean's Holiday features Rowan Atkinson taking a vacation in France, and running a gauntlet of slapstick all the way from London to Cannes. Most of the humor is infantile, by which I mean that even an infant (or a person willing to behave like an infant (by which I mean "me")) finds it funny, and I observed one bit of localized humor lost on all but the most astute francophone.

Bean hitches a ride from Sabine (he takes ample comedic advantage of the similarity in their names) in her own Mini somewhere in rural France. As they're tooling down a two-lane road, a much more powerful car roars past them aggressively.

Sabine hollers "Espèce de conard!" which means something like, "You ba****d!" and which the subtitle renders as "What kind of idiot do you think you are?!"

Bean, attempting to say the same thing, hollers "Espèce de canard!" thinking he's similarly denouncing the driver. The subtitle renders it as "What kind of duck do you think you are?!"

I suspect that the canard/conard play on words has been used before, but the subtlety here is all the more appealing amid all the blatant slapstick.

If you found it humorous, you can thank your friendly localization manager or translator.