'Johnny English Reborn' review

Published Oct 3 2011, 09:00 BST  |  By Ben Rawson-Jones

'Johnny English Reborn' isn't the most appropriate title for this dismal 'comedy'. A plethora of pitiful gags, overfamiliar situations and woeful direction ensures that this calamitous clanger comes close to competing with Mr Bean's Holiday in the race to waste Rowan Atkinson's undoubted talents.

The general strategy in this deeply unfunny movie appears to involve hapless MI-7 spy Johnny doing something stupid, followed by a cut to a supporting character looking on aghast, and culminating on a quick zoom into Atkinson's face as he deploys a wretched gurn. Repeat ad infinitum and rinse. Rinse those tears away from your eyes as the abject despair takes hold as the script resorts to tried and tested hilarity like an elongated sequence in which Johnny falls over while putting his trousers on.

Then there's Johnny sitting on a cat. Yawn. Johnny hitting a golf ball that lands on a passer-by's head. Zzzzz. Johnny frequently mispronouncing a Russian man's name. Pass the sick bag. Hold the front page - maybe Johnny attacking various innocent people due to a case of mistaken identity might make the ribs crack with laughter? No chance.

About four decent laughs are interspersed amidst this stale parody of the secret agent genre, which charts Johnny English's attempts to redeem himself after an unfortunate incident in Mozambique.

After several years trying to train his mind and body in a remote part of Asia, which is the strongest portion of the movie due to a couple of amusing visual jokes, the spy is brought back into the fold by MI-7. His mission is to stop an assassination attempt on the Chinese PM by an international group of assassins, including a mole (or 'vole' as Johnny says) from his own organisation.

The sole standout scene in the movie involves Johnny's woes with the height mechanism of a chair during an important meeting. Significantly, the camera is perfectly still and trained on Atkinson for the bulk of this interlude. The idea and performance are strong enough to sell the gag.

Elsewhere though, director Oliver Parker displays a shocking inadequacy at generating even a mild titter from a few moments that had the potential to be funny. To the contrary, the languid editing and pacing means that the camera lens dwells on and oversells such moments, desperately imploring the audience to laugh for an elongated period before moving on. Given the 'hit and miss' nature of the genre, a quickfire cutting policy should have been used instead.

The likes of Gillian Anderson, Dominic West and Rosamund Pike all feature as stock characters that do not merit description, all playing it straight amidst the humour void surrounding them. Along with Rowan Atkinson, they are all deserving of vastly superior material than the tripe of Johnny English Reborn - as are any unfortunate viewers of this movie. Cathartic rant over. Mind purged of the experience. Deep breaths...