Do you want to know the power of the international box office? A marginal comedy by British great Rowan Atkinson is getting a sequel, which is shocking, considering how few in the West remember the forgettable Johnny English in the first place. Trying to build on the unbelievable appeal of the actor's Mr. Bean, a couple of former Bond scribes came up with the spy spoof, which made a pittance in the US but struck gold everywhere else. Now, eight years after the first film hit theaters, Johnny English is being "reborn" for yet another bumbling trek through the UK intelligence community. While breezy and well made, it suffers from the supreme sin of any proposed laughfest -- it's just not very funny.
After a disastrous mission in Mozambique, ace English spy Johnny English (Aktinson) has been sent to Tibet to learn the ways and discipline of martial arts. But when an assassination plot against the Chinese Premiere is uncovered, our bumbling agent becomes the only man for the job. Seems one member of the notorious splinter cell called Vortex will only talk to English. When he does, unfortunately, he is murdered. Soon, every human clue our hero comes across meets a fatal end. This makes English's superior, Pegasus (Gillian Anderson), his trusted partner Tucker (Daniel Kaluuya), the bureau's behavioral psychologist (Rosamund Pike) and number one Ambrose (Dominic West) nervous. The leader is scheduled to meet with the British Prime Minister, and unless he succeeds, no one's safety can be assured.
Visual, simple, and loaded with readily translatable physical comedy, Johnny English Reborn is a spoof for those in short pants. It's not meant to be sly or satiric. Instead, we get a beloved actor trading on his rep for a bigger and bigger paycheck, the genius he once displayed long dispensed with for more single-digit IQ ideas. As a character, Johnny English is complicated. He's not a bumbler like The Pink Panther's Clouseau. In fact, he's quite adept at apprehending the bad guys (as an early parkour-inspired action scene lampoon suggests). But then he will turn around and mess things up by doing something so brainless it seems lifted from a completely different movie. As a result, we can't tell if English is a good guy given over to strokes of stupidity, or a true incompetent who just gets lucky...a lot.It doesn't really matter, however. The film is so bereft of legitimate laughs that it has to rely on hackneyed overworked humor to dig up a scarce giggle here and there. Sure, we find the sequence where English breaks his automatically adjusting chair comical, but it barely registers as original. In fact, since we are on the fence about the character's aptitude, we're not sure if he's pulling a prank or legitimately dumb. As for those around him, they are nothing more than the standard issue genre stereotypes -- the overwrought boss, the suave superior with a secret, the concerned coworker with a bit of a crush, and the right hand man who is far more skilled and smart. While they don't add much to the proceedings, they don't distract from them as well.
Because of the talent involved, because the movie never takes itself or its intentions too seriously, Johnny English Reborn is not bad. It's just boring. It takes a man of significant wit and personality and drains him of both. Aktinson may always be remembered for his work as Mr. Bean, or the brilliant BBC TV series Blackadder. As it was back in 2003, Johnny English is a mere piffle. He is not reborn here so much as he is unnecessarily redundant.
