Johnny English Blu-ray Review
The spy who stayed out in the cold.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, April 24, 2012
As hard as it may be for some of us to understand, Rowan Atkinson is evidently an acquired taste. This fussy,
mannered comic actor, who with his pop eyes resembles something akin to another version of Marty Feldman, drives
some people crazy with his tic filled performances, while others (myself among them) find him more often than not
hilarious. For every fan of
Blackadder or
Mr. Bean or indeed
Johnny English there is an equal
and opposite derider claiming that these efforts, and Atkinson in particular, are lackluster and even worthless. So to all
the Atkinson haters (or at least dislikers) out there, make no mistake about it: you won't like much if anything about
Johnny English, a project tailor made for Atkinson's patented blend of buffoonery and grimacing facial
expressions. And it must be admitted that even for Atkinson fans,
Johnny English is probably not
as
funny as might have been hoped for, with a screenplay that tries too hard to be clever in spoofing the eminently
spoofable James Bond franchise, an idea that American audiences experienced a generation (or two) before
Johnny
English hit the big screen with the inspired Mel Brooks – Buck Henry series
Get Smart! (the less said about
the Steve Carell film reboot of that series, the better), and which international audiences had flocked to with Mike
Myers' ultra-silly
Austin Powers trilogy just a few years ago. Atkinson's
shtick has more often than not
been built around a
persona of a bumbling idiot who wreaks havoc on everything around him, but who of course
remains clueless to his inherent incompetence and just keeps soldiering through, usually somehow to an improbably
happy ending. And that for the most part sums up
Johnny English, albeit with a bunch of spy gizmos thrown in
for good measure.
There frankly isn't a lot to
Johnny English. Johnny is a workaday shlub in British Intelligence (in Johnny's case, a
definite oxymoron, emphasis on the moron), who due to his own incompetence manages to get every other field agent
killed in an early scene. That puts Johnny in charge of protecting the Crown Jewels as they're shown to the public in
the
Tower of London after having been "restored" with copious funds from a slimy French owner – operator of high tech
prisons, Pascal Sauvage (John Malkovich, doing perhaps the worst French accent ever, hopefully intentionally). Need it
be
said that by the end of the unveiling the jewels have disappeared and Sauvage is the prime suspect? That sets up the
central plot arc where Johnny must find and reclaim the jewels while taking on the nefarious Sauvage.
A film like
Johnny English isn't especially complex or overly ambitious and it of course deals with types rather
than fleshed out characters, positing our bumbling hero, who never met a pratfall he didn't like, and the manically
hyperbolic Sauvage, who in Malkovich's portrayal should be stuffed full due to all the scenery chewing involved.
Therefore
Johnny English must rise or fall on its execution, and in that regard the results are decidedly mixed.
There are some fantastic gags here, as in that early scene when Johnny assures his superior that the site is the most
secure location in the world, which is of course followed by an earth shaking calamity that kills virtually everyone else in
the scene.
But at other times director Peter Howitt completely deflates his own punchlines through inept staging. In the scene
where the Crown Jewels are displayed and then all hell breaks loose, Johnny ends up clobbering an official in the dark
and then claims that the misdeed was done by an unknown assailant who has run into an adjoining room. Johnny of
course offers to go take care of the bad guy, who obviously doesn't exist. He then stages a
faux fight with the
supposed villain, with the door to the room slightly ajar, so that the impeccably well dressed audience in attendance
can gasp in horror as Johnny momentarily appears in the space between the door and the jamb, ostensibly wrestling
with the unseen super villain. But then Howitt stupidly cuts to coverage from
inside the room, showing Johnny
dancing around all by his lonesome. How dunderheaded is that? We already know there isn't anyone there, and the
joke is seeing a small strip of Johnny in the door opening
appearing to be fighting with someone, with the
audience's reaction generating some of the laughs. Cutting to inside the room completely defeats the purpose of the
scene and robs it of much of its comedic impact.
Atkinson is such an odd looking man that any attempt for him to come across as anything other than your slightly (okay,
maybe more than slightly) eccentric British Uncle falls flat, and so some of the scenes in the film where Johnny plays it
more or less straight simply don't work. The film is best in setting up and then delivering a series of fun sight gags,
usually built around Johnny's incredible obliviousness to what's going on around him or his equal incompetence in
handling items or dealing with supposedly everyday events. Atkinson is a supremely gifted physical comedian, one who
is able to elicit laughs from even substandard material, and he does manage to provoke giggles fairly consistently
throughout the film. Malkovich is a piece of work here; one has to wonder if he was "herbally enhanced" (or something
similar) for much of this shoot, because his Sauvage is just a truly
weird characterization, which unfortunately
doesn't automatically convert into laughs.
For all its lame brained antics and lack of true comic innovation,
Johnny English is breezy enough and it benefits
from being quick and largely painless. If a bit doesn't find its target, there's another one soon on the way, and while
the film's overall batting average isn't much above the .500 mark (if even that), the moments that do land provide some
solid guffaws, and Atkinson, as bizarre as he always is, is never less than watchable. The film may not be anything
close to a classic, but it found its audience and has thus far spawned one sequel, so chances are for better or worse
Johnny will be wreaking havoc in the spy genre for years to come.
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