The new movie Johnny English stars the British comedian Rowan Atkinson, he of "Mr. Bean" and "Black Adder" fame. Those shows appeared on the BBC and if you're not taken with BBC comedies or with British humor to begin with, then you probably won't find much to like about Johnny English.
But now that I think about it, Johnny English, a spy spoof in the "Austin Powers" mold (although not nearly as funny) isn't particularly-or should I say, peculiarly-English. It's plotted at the sitcom level and is really more generic than representative of any specific brand of comedy. You still probably won't find much to like about it.
Atkinson plays the title character, a mid-level British civil servant who is elevated to the rank of master spy when his bungling "security" measures get all the other British secret agents killed. Now it is up to English to foil a French businessman who has traced his lineage back to royalty and plans to force the Queen to abdicate so that he may be crowned king.
John Malkovich plays the French businessman and all I could think watching the great actor was that he must have needed the paycheck from this film to buy a Spanish villa or something because his performance is joyless and embarrassing. Atkinson comes off better. He is a moderately gifted physical comedian and he can do funny things with his face. Sometimes the sheer force of his efforts to make us laugh transcends the lousy material.
And lousy material this is. There are a few good jokes sprinkled throughout and, as I said, Atkinson is occasionally inspired (and obviously channeling Peter Sellers), but overall the set-ups and gags are agonizingly protracted and obvious. And now that the "Austin Powers" films have raised the bar on bathroom humor (think Fat Bastard) Atkinson climbing up a sewage pipe while the toilets overhead are being flushed seems not only disgusting, but also strangely tame.
Beyond that there's an inventive chase through the streets of London, funny because English's Aston Martin is immobilized on a back of a tow truck while the truck is chasing down the bad guys. Also engaging is the Australian pop star Natalie Imbruglia who plays the requisite female spy. She's a total babe and a welcome distraction from the other schlep in the movie.
And that's about it, 300 precious words short of what I'm allotted.
Mediocre movies like Johnny English are the hardest kind of movies to review. Great movies are exhilarating to write about. I could write pages and pages about The Pianist, The Two Towers, or Whale Rider, my cinephilic passions reigned in only by admonitions of practicality from my editors. Bad movies, like Darkness Falls or Daredevil or Fight Club, provide so much comic fodder, so much terrible material to mock and deride and be aghast at, that they are also great fun to scribble away on.
But mediocre films don't move me in any way. They are as insubstantial as the popcorn in the theater lobby and just as nutritious. Even in someone like me, who takes great joy in writing about the movies, all they inspire is a failure of imagination.
Reach the reporter at michael.b.green@asu.edu.
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out of four
