Johnny English RebornDirector: Oliver Parker
Stars:Rowan Atkinson, Gillian Anderson, Rosamund Pike
Screening: general release
Rating: ***
IT’S been eight years since Rowan Atkinson spoofed James Bond in the movie Johnny English.
Which would suggest no one was exactly clamouring for a sequel.
And yet here we are again wincing along as Atkinson’s clown prince of international espionage slips up in spectacular fashion and, just occasionally, lands on his feet.
To be honest I can’t remember a single gag from the original 2003 movie.
Johnny English Reborn is the same – and it’s barely a day since I’ve seen it.
And yet Atkinson’s nincompoop routine delivers enough check-your-brain-at-the-door chuckles to make this movie an amusing time-waster.
Johnny English is British intelligence’s loosest cannon, a clueless MI-7 agent who struggles to get out of his own way even before the bullets start flying.
Sacked for incompetence, the disgraced English has been in training with monks in Tibet for years when he is recalled to active duty to thwart a plot to assassinate the visiting premier of China.
The story is not very well explained or even the slightest bit convincing – something about three stainless-steel keys that unlock a powerful mind-control drug.
All you need to know is that Atkinson will deliver his trademark brand of Mr Bean-style buffoonery and pratfalling, but all dressed up in the accoutrements of the spy-movie caper: the tuxedo, the gadgets, the cool car and the obligatory snowmobile/parachute/helicopter stunts.
If you are over the rubber-faced antics of Atkinson, stand clear.
Since we last saw English in action, moviegoers have been shaken by Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne films and stirred by Daniel Craig’s rebooted 007 movies, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
But you wouldn’t necessarily know it from Johnny English Reborn. This is more of the same Atkinson slapstick and tickle.
There’s a high-speed pursuit in a rocket-powered wheelchair, repeated kicks to the groin, some nonsense in a body bag and a burst of gangly bump and grind to Word Up by Korn (you know, ‘‘Wave your hands in the air like you don’t care ...’’).
And given there’s a mind-control drug to be administered, English will, of course, be required at some point to wrestle with himself for control of a gun.
None of this physical schtick will rock your world but it’s good for a few brain-free giggles and groans.
The trick here is that the inept but utterly oblivious English seriously fancies himself as the debonair hero, so you never quite know when he’s going to jag a win and then immediately cock it up.
Atkinson’s co-stars play it straight: The Wire’s Dominic West as a fellow agent; Gillian Anderson doing Judi Dench-style posh deportment as the head of MI-7; and former Bond girl Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day) effortlessly lovely as English’s unlikely love interest.
Devoted fans of Atkinson’s clowning should stick through the final credits, which come to life after a few minutes with a kitchen sequence in which English prepares a dish in sync with Edvard Greig’s In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt.
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