Directed by:
Oliver ParkerCinematography:
Danny CohenComposer:
Ilan EshkeriCast:
Rowan Atkinson, Gillian Anderson, Dominic West, Rosamund Pike, Daniel Kaluuya, Richard Schiff, Tim McInnerny, Pik Sen Lim, Stephen Campbell Moore (more)VOD (5)
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Rowan Atkinson returns to the role of the accidental secret agent who doesn't know fear or danger in the comedy spy-thriller Johnny English Reborn. In this adventure, the most unlikely intelligence officer in Her Majesty's Secret Service must stop a group of international assassins before they eliminate a world leader and cause global chaos. In the years since MI-7's top spy vanished off the grid, he has been honing his unique skills in a remote region of Asia. But when his agency superiors learn of an attempt against the Chinese premier's life, they must hunt down the highly unorthodox agent. (Universal Pictures UK)
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Johnny English's sequel could only be worse in two ways compared to the bland first installment: If Rowan Atkinson wasn't playing the lead role, or if he was, but for some mysterious reason he'd stop being funny. Fortunately, nothing like that happened and I can say that I like Johnny English Reborn better than its predecessor. There are many more memorable moments in the film, the absolute best of which is the cunning Hong Kong chase, and there are more original (the chair, the helicopter) and unprecedentedly refined jokes (the training with Tibetan monks and his gradual improvement - especially in the cable car), there's not a single fecal scene I hated the writers for, as was the case with the previous film, and thanks to the constant battles with the maniacal cleaning lady, we learn that a repeated joke can still be a joke if you know how to repeat it properly. And the biggest positive is the fact that this time Agent English is not such a blatantly clumsy idiot, but rather a capable and likeable person, who of course often has bad luck.__P.S. The scene in the credits made me cry. Laughing, of course.
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The second Johnny English follows in the footsteps of its predecessor in terms of atmosphere and plot, and while it doesn't offer much that's new, it's an enjoyable and funny hundred minutes of screen time. We're once again dealing with treacherous villains, and once again we witness English getting from one trouble to the next (the boss's mother and the Queen could tell you about it). But it still worked for me and the plot pretty much moved along so I didn't get bored.
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The threat of global terrorism is set aside, as Johnny English is back. The significance of the training that the agent undergoes in the prologue remains concealed until the final minutes. English’s outward expressions exhibit the same degree of dim-wittedness. He doesn’t understand and refuses to understand what is happening around him, which again and again gives rise to jokes of a similar nature. These are distinguishable by their degree of predictability (mostly a very high degree) and the extent to which their punchlines involve a man getting kicked in the crotch. Atkinson used up his best grimaces long ago and once more resorts to his Mr. Bean character (the mailbag sketch), unlike which English operates in an overly serious context in order to amuse us at least with his surreal eccentricity. (This is why the brutally stylised Austin Powers works better, as every hint of seriousness is immediately shot through with Myers’s clowning.) As in the first Johnny English, a feeble romantic subplot appears as if from a completely different film and its premature termination seems to illustrate English’s inability (impossibility) to grow up and become a man. The few flashes of more ambitious humour (the rooftop “chase”) are not sufficiently developed to the point that Johnny English Reborn could be described as an imaginative commentary on the transformations that the spy-movie genre has undergone in recent years. English comes across as less of an idiot particularly thanks to the fact that he got a bigger idiot for a partner. Both of them are analogous to film enthusiasts who look up to dauntless agents like James Bond. They are oblivious to what is clear in the film’s message – if the world is to be saved, it won’t be saved by heroes, but by chance. Learning something of that sort from a genre spectacle would almost be cause for concern if the spectacle wasn’t so dumb as to discourage paying attention to any of its subtextual messages. The wait for the next Bond movie can be shortened by more entertaining activities. Such as listening to the Queen’s Christmas messages. 50%
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One half of the plot, which even 007 would (almost) be proud of, the other half a continuation of the traditions of classic comedies from the 60s á la Louis de Funès. Thanks to the perpetually stone-faced expression of the main character, the second salvo of Johnny's escapades is infinitely enjoyable, even with the unnecessary overdose of the most trivial gag of the whole film. The highlight is then Rowan Atkinson's perfect cooking lesson, which you better practice painstakingly before you try your hand at it.
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This amounts to unnecessary suffering that is only functional when the last two Bond films are made fun of. Otherwise, the film offers a crystalline distillate of essential awkwardness in which Atkinson's "poker face" is completely off, you can read the villain from the opening credits, and the only pleasant surprise left is that Gillian Anderson is an utterly luxurious "MILF." :)
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