Jonny English Movie Review
It has been eight years since Rowan Atkinson debuted his MI7 agent Johnny English. Anyone who saw the first film might wonder why it deserved a sequel and why it took so long to produce another film about a less than exceptionally funny character in a spy parody that was not very smart.
Atkinson, one of British comedy's brightest talents, with a rubber face and physical ability made for comedy, has not seen a particularly successful transfer of the television success of shows like Not the Nine o’clock News and Mr Bean to success on the big screen. There must be a better way for him to utilise his skills in the service of a film that isn't mere stupidity splashed in dollars for cheap laughs from the peanut gallery. The plot of this sequel is unnecessary and exists merely to fulfil the basic requirement that a film tell a story. It functions as a badly hung line across which Atkinson is allowed to do his best to balance using his eyebrows, long limbs and plasticine features to impersonate Peter Sellers's Inspector Clouseau.
After vanishing off the grid following a bungled operation in Mozambique, English is found training with Tibetan monks, only to be recalled into service in order to help stop an assassination attempt on the Chinese premier. The many silly jokes about gadgets, women and James Bond can't stop the whole film wearing thin quickly, and none of them results in laughs. There are, however, sequences that show off Atkinson's skills as a physical comedian with a precision sense of timing, but these are technical rather than comic highlights. What Dominic West as the suave man is doing here wasting his excellent acting talent is anyone's guess, save for the suggestion that, like Atkinson, the British star of The Wire has so far had a less than successful transition from the small screen to the big. By the time the excruciating and horribly old-fashioned mess concludes, the world will hopefully not be holding its breath for a return of agent English to accidentally save it from some future crisis. No one can be that desperate, even in the season of popcorn fluff, unnecessary 3D and comfortable, unmemorable Oscar contenders.
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