|
Johnny English Reborn
| Released |
7 October 2011 |
| Director |
Oliver Parker |
Starring
|
Rowan Atkinson, Gillian Anderson, Dominic West, Rosamund Pike, Daniel Kaluuya, Richard Schiff |
| Writer(s) |
Hamish McColl |
Producer(s)
|
Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Chris Clark |
Origin
|
United States, France, United Kingdom |
| Running Time |
101 minutes |
| Genre |
Comedy, adventure, thriller |
| Rating |
PG |
|
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Johnny Brutal.
Not since the days of Blackadder has actor Rowan Atkinson even flirted with the notion of being funny. Mr. Bean was a painful exercise in refraining from destroying your television while the original Johnny English movie was quirky but, ultimately, pretty poor. Its sequel, however, has managed to do the most infuriating thing a film can set out to achieve: steal almost two hours of your life that you will never, ever get back.
Johnny English Reborn is an action comedy –I use the word comedy with extreme caution– film that revisits MI-7 secret agent Johnny English. The series is clearly a parody on the James Bond saga and, thus, it is easy to imagine the premise of the story. England has an international crisis that puts the Chinese premier's life in danger which leads MI-7 to seek the help of disgraced spy, English. The usual components are in the mix– a love interest, an in-house villain and a flurry of full-blown action sequences.
What there isn't any evidence of is a clever script. The acting is excusable because if you go and see a film like this you know what you are bargaining for but the jokes are painfully bad. Not only are they terrible, they are obvious. A gag can be predicted about half a minute before it actually happens so don't expect any element of surprise laughter. Silly comedy can often be funny if it is done well. Unfortunately, that is certainly not the case here.
In all honesty, I struggle to find anything that is good about this film. A significant portion of the action is almost a throwback to 1980s special effects. Whether that is done on purpose or not for comic effect, who knows! Actually, there was one good part of the film. The end of it. And long may it be the end of Johnny English.
-
David Caulfield |
