James Bond as a film character has been around so long, and devolved so often into self-parody, that Johnny English Reborn is already well past its sell-by date as relevant satire. Not to say that it couldn’t be entertaining if done with the proper inspiration and competence. The Bond series offers so many areas ripe for spoofing — from his incredible nick-of-time luck to his prowess with women. Alas, satire isn’t really Johnny English Reborn’s bag — It’s quite content to be an unambitious time-waster.
Think repeated kicks to the crotch and you’ll get an accurate idea of the level of sophistication on display. That’s also not a bad metaphor for the assault on the audience’s sensibilities. Physical comedy can be sublimely funny, but no one involved with Johnny English Reborn seems like they could be bothered with trying.
This needless sequel to 2003’s Johnny English is numbing and lazy. A confrontation in a restaurant bathroom drags on and on to little comic effect. An old Chinese female killer may bring to mind Rosa Klebb for the hipper demographic, but beyond that, she isn’t funny. The old crone is simply there for English to make a spectacle of himself — and he doesn’t fare much better for all his efforts.
With his bug eyes, over-sized nostrils and rubber face, Atkinson is cute like an ugly puppy dog, which should make him ideal for engendering audience sympathy. Unfortunately, his character English is an annoying twit. I can’t understand why we’d be expected to root for someone who’s smarmy, arrogant and a complete dork at the bargain. Worse still is the way those around him observe his behavior with little more than wide-eyed incredulity. At least Chief Inspector Dreyfus tried to choke the stupidity out of Clouseau.
Opportunities for satire or just straight-up comedy go by the wayside as scenes are inexplicably played straight. When it tries to be funny, Johnny English Reborn telegraphs its jokes and then can’t deliver them with invention. To give but one example, English places a lozenge in his mouth while at the MI-7 weapons laboratory. Cue the walk-on who asks if anyone has seen the “voice-changing lozenges,” followed by English’s high-pitched (and thoroughly needless) “no.” End of scene. Bond’s visits to Q’s headquarters were funnier than anything on display here.
The film’s thin assassination plot reminds that foiling an assassination was central to The Naked Gun and Zoolander. But those far superior comedies were unafraid to embrace absurdity and be democratic in doling out the laughs. Johnny English Reborn has no such guiding inspiration and offers no comedic opportunities for any of its supporting characters.
Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) and Rosamund Pike (who co-starred in Pierce Brosnan’s final Bond entry, Die Another Day) look lost amidst these puerile shenanigans. Anderson isn’t given the space to be anything more than uptight as English’s superior. Pike, cast as a psychologist, gets to be warmer and compassionate, but the attempted romantic connection between her and Atkinson is daft. A kiss from Pike’s character revives English after he had flatlined, allowing him to live and make a jerk of himself again. She shouldn’t have bothered.
This article appears in Oct 20-26, 2011.
