Johnny English Strikes Again is a movie literally nobody asked for, yet I’m still glad it’s here, if only because it allows Rowan Atkinson to headline a feature again. Rowan Atkinson is one of the worlds’ greatest masters of both physical comedy and sharp wit, demonstrated respectively through his two most iconic characters, Mr. Bean and Edmund Blackadder. I’ll also admit that he’s one of my personal comedy heroes, Blackadder in particular having had a crucial impact on my life.
Johnny English on the other hand is a spy parody series that’s been a mixed bag overall. Taking a leaf out of Space Jam’s book, it was originally a series of Barclaycard ads Atkinson starred in during the ‘90s before being expanded into films. 2003’s Johnny English was awkwardly written and frequently predictable, very much a comedy of its time, but with enough laughs to make it a mildly entertaining send-up of Pierce Brosnan-era Bond flicks. Its’ sequel, Johnny English Reborn, came eight years later and was more sophisticated, more focussed in its plot as it targeted modern Bond and Bourne movies, and was actually pretty good but for one bad running joke. Another seven years later, we have Johnny English Strikes Again, Atkinson now firmly in his late Roger Moore phase as he makes a valiant attempt with heavily outdated material.
A massive cyber-attack exposes all of Britain’s active secret agents, and so the fictional MI7 is forced to recall Johnny English out of the retirement he’s been spending teaching geography students espionage. Answering to the Prime Minister (Emma Thompson), he and his old assistant Bough (Ben Miller) investigate in the south of France; where they come across another spy (Olga Kurylenko), while the Prime Minister cozies up to a Silicon Valley billionaire (Jake Lacy) for his assistance in this crisis.
Each of these movies has had a different director, from Sliding Doors’ Peter Howitt to St. Trinians’ Oliver Parker, and now That Mitchell and Webb Look’s David Kerr, making his feature debut. And each movie has had a different style to it, generally based on the environment of spy movies it came out in. But since there hasn’t been much a shift in the genre since 2011 and the team behind this movie wasn’t creative enough, Johnny English Strikes Again doesn’t really know what it wants to be. And so it haphazardly applies modern technological story devices, such as the prevalence of the internet, hacking, and smartphones, to a rudimentary conflict. The plot of this movie is really dumb, and this is coming from a series that featured an evil French John Malkovich trying to be crowned King of England. It’s so uninspired, unambitious, and would have been outdated fifteen years ago. The movie also seems to have a mild anti-technological stance, represented through English’s cynicism and rejection of modern technology, despite having a love for new gadgets in previous instalments -though in fairness, there’s no real continuity to these films.
It’s also interesting how each of these movies has written the title character differently. He went from a self-centred, bumbling, and in some cases just unlucky agent out of his depth, to actually being a capable, though naive and gullible spy. In this film he’s mostly back to being inept, but with added idiosyncrasies and stupidity. I imagine this was done to inject some more familiar Mr. Bean-style humour into the character. It’s a testament to Atkinsons’ talent that he can make some of this work where a lesser comedian wouldn’t have a chance. And indeed there are a few really good physical sequences to this movie, most notably one where English gets carried away with a VR simulator. But the arrested development of his character and repetitiveness of some of the jokes does do Atkinson a disservice, and even the direction on other physical comedy bits can be really strange and unfunny. Just like the plot, a lot of the jokes are stale.
Olga Kurylenko is really wasted in the flat role of English’s love interest, again another spy, and there’s very little chemistry between them. Comedian Ben Miller returns as Bough, once more proving a very good foil to English and the much better spy. His role is actually much larger than in the first film, to the point he has almost as much screen-time as the title character. Adam James is mostly forgettable as the new Pegasus (the head of MI7), especially following in the footsteps of Gillian Anderson; but Jake Lacy is a good fit for the thin, obnoxious bro of a villain -though it doesn’t make the character any less insufferable. And add Emma Thompson to the list of actors way too good for a movie like this as she plays a blatant, unflattering, often unfunny Theresa May caricature. She’s a two-time Oscar winner for god’s sake and she’s previously starred alongside Atkinson in The Tall Guy and Love, Actually -how did she get roped into this?
This movie really could have been better and a lot funnier if it had satirized the age of spies like English and Bough trying to play by the old school rules in the modern world of espionage. But unfortunately the movie’s not aware of how irrelevant it is. It might have worked okay had it come out around the time the first movie did, but not in 2018. Instead it feels tired, and though dotted with great comedy moments thanks to Atkinsons’ comedic skills, it’s not terribly enjoyable (and it doesn’t help that the poster looks uncomfortably similar to Spy Hard). But if nothing else, it does make me appreciate the second films’ strengths all the more, and even some of the silly charm of the first.
Rowan Atkinson deserves to be in more movies. Hell, with his stage-work and the recent detective series Maigret, he’s been really testing his dramatic capabilities and I’d love to see them reach a wider audience. But let’s put Johnny English to rest.
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