JOHNNY ENGLISH STRIKES AGAIN: A Laugh Out Loud, Yet Plotless Display of Rowan Atkinson's Mastery in Physical Buffoonery

Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy

Produced by: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Chris Clark

Directed by: David Kerr

Written by: William Davies

Production Company: Universal Pictures

Starring: Rowan Atkinson, Ben Miller, Olga Kurylenko, Emma Thompson, Jake Lacy     

Runtime: 89 minutes                           

SYNOPSIS: 

The British intelligence is under cyber attack, blowing almost all of its secret agents’ cover. With the country’s national security at risk, the higher-ups are left with no choice but to bring the inept Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson) out of retirement. Reuniting with his old partner Bough (Ben Miller), English must quickly uncover the orchestrator responsible for the recent panic, while trying not to make a mess out of things. 

REVIEW: 

Johnny English displays its lead Rowan Atkinson’s comedic versatility. Some might identify the Johnny English movies as James Bond spoofs, but at the same time, it also combines the best of both Atkinson’s physical-driven humor (Mr. Bean) and dialogue-driven one (Blackadder). To those who are not as familiar with the Blackadder series as they are with the Mr. Bean series, the Johnny English movies kind of answers every Mr. Bean fans’ “what if” scenarios.  What if Mr. Bean can speak? What if Mr. Bean is a secret agent? 

At the end of the day, people will not probably hold Johnny English in the same regards as other Rowan Atkinson’s characters, Mr. Bean in particular. Still, since, one, he hasn’t done any physical comedy recently, and, two, that there hasn’t been any indication that there will be any cinematic or television revival of the Mr. Bean character any time soon, this is the closest the audience can get to Mr. Atkinson’s return to physical comedy.  Seven years after the actor’s last slapstick-filled adventure on the big screen with the second Johnny English movie (Johnny English Reborn (2011)), he finally put that sabbatical period to bed by once again reprising his role as the titular secret agent in Johnny English Strikes Again. 

With a far shorter runtime (89 minutes), the series’ third chapter more than makes up for the previous installment’s long, yet disappointingly uneven amounts of laughs with a constant barrage of it. Strikes Again almost feels like a throwback to the first Johnny English (2003), the straightforward slapsticky, cartoonish Bond spoof that never took itself seriously, even for a second. 

And that goes down to the film’s awareness on the type of Bond it should be mimicking. If there is ever any way to describe which Bond best resembles Rowan Atkinson, then the actor is more of the Roger Moore-type than the Daniel Craig-type he tried to poke fun of in Reborn.  English is the type of Bond-like agent who is most likely to cross the water by running across a number of crocodiles’ backs ala Moore’s iconic stunt in Live and Let Die (1973) than he was the trauma-affected recluse hiding in the mountainside in Reborn. 

Having Strikes Again focus on Johnny English’s Moore-esque adventures and mishaps rather than having such element shared with the darker intelligence subplot like in Reborn results in a far more unrelentingly-paced romp. The jokes here never let up throughout its runtime. Just when the audience’s throats are sore from constantly laughing at the first bit, another bit comes in a split second, drawing even bigger laughs. And like in Mr. Bean, its emphasis on easy physical humor allows for a much wider appeal, especially to those who like their comedy more action-driven. 

Also, in conjunction with Mr. Bean, Strikes Again slightly pays tribute to the character through the set up in each of the gags. Look closer, and it is evident that quite a few bits that made the cut are lifted off straight from some of Mr. Bean’s episodes. Obviously, they’ve been reworked and tinkered about to fit the spy atmosphere, but those who had seen a number of Mr. Bean episodes a hundred times cannot help but notice the subtle familiarities. 

For a movie about a character dealing with different comedic situations, there’s this one underlying theme that connects all the gags: the analog v. the digital. Somehow, it becomes a bit of Johnny English’s character arc here, how a man with an analog mind has to navigate through the current era's more technologically-driven world, one that’s presented in typical, slapsticky Johnny English fashion. By far, one of the most laugh-out-loud moments in the movie revolves around English trying to find out how a Virtual Reality (VR) glasses works, a simple scene that escalates into the main character walking around the streets of London, oblivious to his surroundings, and leaving bodily and property chaos in his wake. 

Yet, oddly, it’s Strikes Again’s constant barrage of laughs that is also one of its primary flaws. For all the humor that comes the audience’s way, it cannot escape the fact that there is not enough substance there to hold the pieces in place. Rather than feeling like we’re watching a movie, watching Strikes Again feels more like watching an extended Mr. Bean episode. Every moment resembles a series of short, random spy-related sketches stitched together to fit the feature-length runtime more than a motion picture with an actual story. 

In terms of premise, it reads as simple as Johnny English v. cyber terrorist. However, when the end credits roll, it is a premise that remains a premise. Or to be exact, it’s a movie that fails to deliver what its premise promises. There’s nothing the screenplay did to give the premise some credibility, in terms of establishing why, besides him being the only agent left, English is an integral figure in the intelligence v. cyber terrorist fight or how that corresponds with his actions. In fact, it is a premise that uses Johnny English only as an excuse for the character’s gags. So often, as funny as the gags are, they have little to almost no impact to the progression of the plot. 

In one scene, Johnny English tries to stop one of the British intelligence's higher-ups from drinking a tea filled with a nerve gas bomb he had accidentally dropped. In another, in an outdoor French-themed restaurant, disguised as a waiter, English tries to steal someone’s phone. And obviously, the character’s recurrent Achilles heel in the saga, he has to do it without making a scene. Let’s not forget once more, the VR sequence. Still, going back to the previous question, what do these events have to do with Johnny English stopping a cyber terrorist? Discounting provoking the audience’s laughter, then the answer is not much.

 

If there is ever any attempt at exploring the cyber terrorism subplot, the film cuts to an unnamed British Prime Minister character (Emma Thompson), sitting in her office, reminding her subordinates of the gravity of the situation. Or more appropriately, she is really there to remind the audience what is going on.  As a cyber movie, it is really one about the British intelligence v. cyber terrorist than it is about Johnny English v. the cyber terrorist. Without this Prime Minister character, Strikes Again is as close as it can be to being a movie about nothing. If nothing is too harsh of a word, then Strikes Again will mostly be remembered as a movie about Johnny English doing dumb things than it is about his cyber adventures. 

In the movie’s defense though, it is easier to mind the lack of substance through its effective humor. However, it is not as easy to mind its underwhelming villain. Johnny English has fought quite an adventurous mix of bad guys in the past. In the first installment, he ran into the moustache-twirling-style evil, cartoonish French businessman Pascal Sauvage (John Malkovich with a phony French accent). In the second installment, to up the ante, he ran into the Craig-era Bond type rogue agent villain in Simon Ambrose (Dominic West). Somehow, this third installment’s way of making Johnny English’s opposition more difficult is by having him face a computer magnate. 

In theory, having a more psychological-type villain like a computer magnate could have been an interesting choice, but in practice, the computer magnate in this movie suggests anything but. Here, Jason Volta (Jake Lacy) assumes the magnate role, and it is almost illogical how this person is a computer magnate in the first place based on his characterization. He’s basically a Steve Jobs poser with the mental capacity of a third grade school bully. In Volta’s many interactions with English, he often resorts to the lowest form of comedy. Volta’s idea of wit is by screaming at English’s face and calling him mean names. 

To make matters worse, what’s already an unfunny character on a comedic standpoint is further offset by his dumb motivation on a villainous standpoint. Some might use comedy as a reason to let dumb villain motivations slide, but still, a villain is a villain. A villain is first and foremost evil, a presence to be feared, two traits that unfortunately Lacy’s Volta do not possess. Volta’s idea of world domination is through … shutting down the Internet! Imagine the many people who’s used to life with encyclopedia and libraries in the past say collectively, yet nonchalantly, “oh, how life-threatening”.  

Once again, even as the actor is now in his early 60’s, Rowan Atkinson proves why he is one of the most respected physical comedians out there. His hair might already be graying now and wrinkles are already forming under his eyes, but the way he uses his body as a punch line indicates that he is still as agile and rubbery as he was two or three decades ago. Rare in today’s comedians, he brings so much class and wit to a subgenre of comedy most comedy fans often perceive as “easy” and “dumb”, and that boils down to Mr. Atkinson’s dedication to the craft. 

Physical comedians are like stuntmen in action movies. Whereas stuntmen have to put fear to the side, in Atkinson’s case, he has to put embarrassment to the side. Nothing is as embarrassing as being asked by a director to hit a pedestrian with a pair of bagels. But he doesn’t let the wisdom of his age stop him from getting his hands in the action. And the force he put behind the hitting the pedestrian with the bagels for instance is infectious enough to produce the laughs. Beyond physical comedy, even when he is required to deliver dialogue for the sake of comedy, he gives the same quality with every enunciation, further channeling the dumb-person-talk-smart aspect of Johnny English’s character.  

At the same time, Atkinson’s slapstick humor works here better than it was in Reborn thanks to the return of Ben Miller as English’s sidekick Bough. It is strange to say that Ben Miller is the superior actor if compared to the Oscar-nominated Daniel Kaluuya, but in terms of who is Rowan Atkinson’s best sidekick in the Johnny English series, then Miller undoubtedly takes the cake. 

Whereas Atkinson’s chemistry with Kaluuya’s character Tucker in Reborn feels forced, Atkinson’s chemistry with Miller here feels more natural. It is clear from the first time Strikes Again reintroduces Bough that Miller is more of Atkinson’s equal when it comes to the physical comedy than Kaluuya was. And with Atkinson’s character being a Bond with a Jacques Closeau characteristic, Miller perfectly embodies Ponton, the smartest of the pair yet also the most loyal in terms of tolerating with English’s antics (even going as far as sharing the pain of being squished inside a car by an airbag). 

In terms of the new cast members, one of the interesting additions to the roster is Olga Kurylenko. Casting a former Bond girl isn’t exactly a first time thing for the Johnny English series, evident from Die Another Day (2002)’s Rosamund Pike’s casting as psychologist Kate Sumner in Reborn. Still, no other actress has a career that’s as Bond-related as Kurylenko herself. Obviously, she was an actual Bond girl in Daniel Craig’s second Bond outing Quantum of Solace (2008). She followed that up by playing alongside an ex-Bond Pierce Brosnan in the spy thriller November Man (2014). No one would imagine that, a decade after her involvement in a legitimate Bond film, she would play more or less the same role in a Bond spoof Johnny English Strikes Again. 

Playing the Bond girl side of her character Ophelia, the actress combines the type of sexy and athleticism that would make her feel at home in the Ian Fleming’s universe. At the same time, being in a Bond spoof allows her to have more fun with the role. Far removed from the gritty, tragic persona of Quantum’s Camille Montes, her Bond girl spin here is more over-the-top, with an emphasis on puns than realism in terms of dialogue delivery. But most importantly, paired with Rowan Atkinson, she is a sport when it comes to the physical comedy. There is one scene in a dance floor involving the two that’s just a staggering sight to see what was once this serious actress/serious Bond girl willingly go along with Atkinson’s tomfoolery. 

A staple in most British films, Emma Thompson makes a brief appearance here as an unnamed British Prime Minister. Bolstered by the actress’s real-life colorful, charming persona, she manages to elevate what is essentially a nothing character into something of an entertaining presence. She doesn’t have to be in the movie, but every time she’s onscreen, she’s so funny that we don’t mind. If only the screenplay had given her much more to do than just be the occasional expository mouthpiece. 

CONCLUSION:

Johnny English Strikes Again goes back to the first installment’s roots. It’s a straightforward slapsticky, cartoonish Bond spoof that highlights Rowan Atkinson’s mastery in physical buffoonery. Unfortunately, it is also a feature-length film that resembles a collection of skits more than a narrative. 

Score: 6.5/10