Man, Johnny English. Of all the spy spoofs to turn into franchises, how did this one get through? Coming out post-Cool Britainia, post-Bond's revival and post-Austin Powers, Johnny English now feels stale for even the time of its release.
The last example might be the most damning, as Johnny English does not share the same satiric frame as Mike Myers' spoof. The idea for the film originated with a series of adverts featuring Atkinson as an incompetent Bondian super spy - a great idea for 30 seconds, but as the basis for a feature-length movie?
I remember going to see it when it came out and I enjoyed it. I ended up going to see it again when a bunch of school friends wanted to see a movie. Outside of a few viewings on TV, Johnny English never stuck to my ribs outside of a few memorable gags.
Since we were in lockdown, I have been perusing Netflix and I found all three JE movies are on there. I decided to check them out and breezed through them on the weekend.
While I was aware of the sequels, I had never seen them. On this viewing I was surprised that it managed to get a couple sequels. Aside from money, there really is not much under the hood with this franchise. I will go into it more as we progress through these movies.
To the original.
Going into this viewing I was under the impression that English started out as a pompous ass, was humbled over the course of his mission, and then used what skills he had to thwart the villain and redeem himself. I was mistaken.
While the are some really good gags, and I am a sucker for Atkinson's overconfident bombast, this movie is remarkably empty. It would be one thing if the movie was chockfull of gags, but unless you are a small child who enjoys jokes about poo and people making faces in the mirror, the laughs dry up for long stretches.
If you ignore the lack of a clearly defined central character, Johnny English is best enjoyed as a showreel of Atkinson's familiar personae as childlike physical comedian and confident spouter of absolute nonsense.
While he has a fine foil in Ben Miller's eternal beta Bough, English is so oblivious and arrogant that by the end of the movie I felt quite bad for both him and Natalie Imbruglia's Lorna Campbell, who both have to pick up the slack while English sails through the movie without consequence.
There is something inherently funny about a character who fails upwards, but English is singularly unlikable.
Enough bashing. There are some really funny sequences and moments: the credit sequence, in which English gets lost in the halls of the HQ while the title cards zip onscreen, is a joy; English accidentally hitting an intercom while explaining his plan to attack the bad guys' summit, while his targets listen in.
This latter sequence might be my favourite, because of John Malkovich's exasperation with having to deal with English again. While he coasts through the villain role, Malkovich brings a much needed dose of venom to proceedings, as he is the only character to point out how annoying and useless English is.
Sauvage's bluntness does lead to one vaguely clever idea - when Sauvage discovers that English has gate-crashed his party, he just tells English's boss Pegasus (Timothy Pigott-Smith) that English has broken into his building and assaulted his staff. It feels like a (mildly) post-modern moment to have a villain immediately break the pretence of civility ala so many Bond movies (see Bond's ridiculous tipping of the hand in Tomorrow Never Dies).
One of the film's undisputed successes is its swaggering score by Edward Shearmur. Like Elmer Bernstein's score for Airplane!, Shearmur never leans into the hijnks, playing up every spy trope with melodramatic elan.
Robbie Williams sings the theme song 'A Man For All Seasons', co-written by current Bond composer Hans Zimmer. A breezy little ditty with touches of Britpop, it nails the movie's tone, and that is meant as a compliment.
Johnny English is not great. In fact, it is probably best viewed while you are doing something else, but there are enough great gags to make it a reasonable time-waster.
Ultimately, there is nothing that high concept about the pitch beyond Rowan Atkinson does James Bond. There are some laughs to be had in that idea, but there needed to be more to make Johnny English worthy of a feature runtime.
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