When one sees 250+ films in a given year one tends to remember both the really good ones and the ones that insulted your intelligence or wasted your time. The first Johnny English was neither of those two, and luckily its sequel, Johnny English Reborn, already an international hit, doesn’t require an understanding of its predecessor. Not that we can’t easily understand Johnny English, a super agent and perhaps idiot savant, a fact the film takes great joy in. Consider a chase scene where Johnny hunts down a suspect, Rowan Atkinson is no Jason Statham, so instead of jumping over a fence, he’ll open the gate two inches away.
Johnny English Reborn has a great deal of fun with these paradoxes, in a Hong Kong casino he goes on the hunt for an “Asian man in spectacles” and stumbles across two would-be contacts, choosing the least obvious to talk-up. It all works out in his favor as he’s either really good, or really lucky: much like another idiot savant in law enforcement of late, Brendon Gleeson’s unorthodox policeman in the hilarious The Guard.
Summoned back into action after an international incident the MI-7 screwed up in Mozambique (the event is introduced to us in headlines as “Doh!-Zambique”), English (Atkinson) is brought back into Her Majesty’s Secret Service to infiltrate an assassination plot at the Chinese premier. At the request of a supervisor Pamela (Gillian Anderson), who aims to end fowl-ups like what went down in Mozambique, English is with a brand new agent who is not yet 21, Tucker (Daniel Kaluuya), and sent on his way.
Like James Bond, he’s sent with a series of toys including voice softening throat lozenges and a digital camera that literally points and shoots (missiles). However, much of the fun of the film is in its physical humor – which when it works, it works. From our first intro to English who knocks Pamela’s cat off a ledge and covers by pretending to stroke it with his back turned to Pamela. English is comprised of Atkinson’s trademark humor: his characters are often either self-obsessed or possessed with a duty to the mission, missing the point of an individual situation. With a few years between the first Johnny English (2003) and the misfire that was Mr. Bean’s Holiday (2007) – he hasn’t warn out his welcome.
Directed by Oliver Parker, Johnny English Reborn is just that – a fun time that doesn’t wear out its welcome, with several laugh-out-loud segments and much to smile at.
Johnny English Reborn is in wide release.