Can you imagine Rowan Atkinson in any profession besides comedian? I mean, really? Could you ever see this guy doing your taxes, fixing your roof, delivering your mail or investigating your murder? I suppose I could see him at the DMV – Rowan looks to me like a guy you’d constantly want to punch – he’d fit in fine there, deliberately misplacing your documents, telling you to fill something out, then wait for you to get to the front of line, tell that you filled it out wrong, wait for you to get to the front of the line again, then tell you you’re in the wrong line. Magical. Purely magical.
Speaking of brain-softening annoyances, eight years ago Rowan Atkinson brought us spy spoof Johnny English. This Clouseau-esque fantasy didn’t work. There’s really no other way of putting it. It was forgettable, moronic and unforgivably derivative. It was painful. Adam Sandler making fart jokes painful. Rowan Atkinson, an acquired taste at best, did not make a career stratagem.
So naturally, he made another.
I remembered the original well enough not to be excited by Johnny English 2.0, a.k.a. Johnny English Reborn. It’s weird when you’re wrong. Well, maybe not when you’re wrong; that’s not so weird. Me? It’s exhilarating to go into a movie expecting an eye glaze and a continual wristwatch survey and find myself bemused, even, dare I say, in the realm of enjoyment. There are legitimately funny moments of Johnny English Reborn. When English comes out of the cold to discover British Intelligence is now sponsored by Toshiba, that’s funny stuff. I especially enjoyed a “chase” in which the much older Atkinson takes on a local tough. Clearly aware of the age difference, Johnny English chases with shortcuts and wisdom. The bad guy scales the building; Johnny calmly takes the elevator. This is Rowan Atkinson at his best – not hamming it up (like he does in several other scenes and in the entirety of the original), but calmly observing the humor and playing into it. This is his best role since Love, Actually.
The key, I think, was a reinvention of character. Johnny English 2003 was just a Clouseau knockoff. The 2011 version is more like Agent Maxwell Smart – confident and competent, but occasionally a poor judge. Credit writers William Davies & Hamish McColl. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t genius; nor should be mistaken for such. All the same, it’s nice to take a poor original and turn it into something positive. Odd that Rowan Atkinson made a superior sequel to a poor original with Mr. Bean’s Vacation four years ago. I’d bet anything that he can’t do it again – but only because I can’t name any other Rowan Atkinson vehicle.
Rated PG, 101 Minutes
D: Oliver Parker
W: William Davies & Hamish McColl
Genre: 007 spoof
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: (Not necessarily UK) folks desperately awaiting the second coming of Monty Python
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The same
Great review, apart from the “UK folks desperately awaiting the second coming of Monty Python”. Most UK folks have forgotten Python altogether (never repeated in TV, just Fawlty Towers). It’s the US folks that seem to have more of an obsession (and Benny Hill, for some unknown reason). UK comedy has moved on (via Ricky Gervais, Chris Morris, Graham Linehan (Irish)).