Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Natalie Imbruglia, Ben Miller, John Malkovich, Tim Pigott-Smith, Kevin McNally, Oliver Ford Davies
Director: Peter Howitt
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Mark Huffam
Screenplay: Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and William Davies
Cinematography: Remi Adefarasin
Music: Ed Shearmur
U.S. Distributor: Universal Pictures
(The following paragraph is intended to be read in the voice of Agent Maxwell Smart.)
Would you believe... that Johnny English is the most amazingly funny satire ever made about spies? [No.] Would you believe... that it's a pretty funny spoof of the Bond movies? [No.] Would you believe... that it's a sporadically amusing lampoon in the same vein as Austin Powers? [No.] Would you believe... that it's basically a dog that should have been released in August with all of the other late-summer refuse? [Yes.]
I didn't have high hopes for Johnny English. After all, there have been so many 007 parodies in the last few years that the genre is oversaturated. (In fact, with Die Another Day, even the "legitimate" Bond movies have gotten into the act. That movie was as close to self-parody as the venerable series has gotten since The Man with the Golden Gun.) If there was cause for optimism, however, it had to do with Rowan Atkinson, the gifted British comedian behind such ventures as "Black Adder" and "Mr. Bean." Sadly, although Atkinson can remove his trousers from underneath a bathing suit on national TV, he can't invigorate this overused premise. Johnny English is a tamer Austin Powers crossed with "Get Smart," with very little in the way of effective humor.
Atkinson plays Britain's most inept spy, Johnny English. At the beginning of the movie, he has a desk job, but, when all of the senior agents are killed in a bomb blast, Johnny and his assistant, Bough (Ben Miller), are recruited to go on active duty and discover who stole the Crown Jewels. The thief turns out to be a Frenchman named Pascal Sauvage (John Malkovich, employing one of the worst French accents in recent film history). Sauvage has designs upon the British throne, but, in order to recognize his goal, he must force the Queen to abdicate, find someone to impersonate the Archbishop of Canterbury, and evade the efforts of Johnny, Bough, and a pretty Interpol agent named Lorna Campbell (Natalie Imbruglia).
Although the level of gross-out comedy in Johnny English doesn't achieve that of Austin Powers, there's still a memorably gut-churning moment in which Johnny climbs through an active sewer pipe and emerges from a toilet. In terms of failed comedic moments, that one's right up there with the scene in which the Archbishop of Canterbury bares his buttocks for the entire cathedral to see. Laughing at these scenes requires that the viewer be drunk, stoned, or under the age of 14. To be fair, Johnny English does have one amusing sequence. It occurs after Johnny mistakenly injects himself with a muscle relaxant and spends the next few moments flopping around like a rag doll.
As far as uniqueness goes, there's little that this movie attempts that hasn't been explored in films from A Man Called Flint to Spy Hard to Austin Powers. Director Peter Howitt, whose last memorable movie was his debut, Sliding Doors, doesn't seem to understand what's funny and what's routine. In the final analysis, Johnny English isn't just forgettable; it's a waste of time. But, for those looking for something positive, this is the only movie I can recall that features music from both ABBA ("Does Your Mother Know") and Handel ("Zadok the Priest"). Let's hear it for musical diversity!
© 2003 James Berardinelli