Beginning with the assassination of Canada's prime minister by an enraged nationalist, then working in reverse chronological order to reveal the bizarre series of events that led up to it, The Bean is a political farce told back-asswards.

The autopsy that opens the picture sets up the tone beautifully. On one level this is a graphic and horrifying scene as the prime minister's cranium is sawed off and a plant is removed from his head. Then we notice some of the men standing around the table look slightly odd. They're wearing wigs; they might as well be kids playing dress-up, like the cast of Bugsy Malone. The finishing touch comes when the coroner announces, "I removed the prime minister's cranium and everything seems to be normal - considering the individual," and a politician shoots back, "No irony!"

The coroner rewinds his recorder and off we go, Memento-style, to the scene of the crime. The crowd control in this scene is amazing. (The Bean was directed by Patrick Boivin; the film was uploaded by PhylactereCola, but they're the same dude.) The assassin approaching through the crowd, the agent disarming him, the people going apes**t - all of it is handled with split-second timing.

The rest of The Bean is basically a showcase for the actor who plays the prime minister, as the doomed pol goes through four transformative stages, including "bulimia." (You don't know what gross-out humor is until you've seen vomit shooting backwards out of this guy's mouth. Guh-ross!) The PM has to act like a complete maniac in every scene, and the actor playing him rises to the occasion with a physically inspired performance.

I love the guy who plays the deputy prime minister, with his f**ked-up teeth and devilish grin, and I love the sci-fi landing the film makes at the very end, when we discover how the prime minister came to have a plant in his head. Is it far-fetched? What if we discovered that certain world leaders had plants instead of brains? Would we be surprised?