Jonny English Movie Review
Friday, October 14, 2011Omoba
It has been eight years since Rowan Atkinson debuted
his MI7 agent Johnny English. Anyone who saw the first film might wonder why it
deserved a sequel and why it took so long to produce another film about a less
than exceptionally funny character in a spy parody that was not very smart.
Atkinson, one of British comedy's brightest talents,
with a rubber face and physical ability made for comedy, has not seen a
particularly successful transfer of the television success of shows like Not
the Nine o’clock News and Mr Bean to success on the big screen. There must be a
better way for him to utilise his skills in the service of a film that isn't
mere stupidity splashed in dollars for cheap laughs from the peanut gallery. The
plot of this sequel is unnecessary and exists merely to fulfil the basic
requirement that a film tell a story. It
functions as a badly hung line across which Atkinson is allowed to do his best
to balance using his eyebrows, long limbs and plasticine features to
impersonate Peter Sellers's Inspector Clouseau.
After vanishing off the grid following a bungled
operation in Mozambique, English is found training with Tibetan monks, only to
be recalled into service in order to help stop an assassination attempt on the
Chinese premier. The many silly jokes about gadgets, women and James Bond can't
stop the whole film wearing thin quickly, and none of them results in laughs. There
are, however, sequences that show off Atkinson's skills as a physical comedian
with a precision sense of timing, but these are technical rather than comic highlights.
What Dominic West as the suave man is doing here wasting his excellent acting
talent is anyone's guess, save for the suggestion that, like Atkinson, the
British star of The Wire has so far had a less than successful transition from
the small screen to the big. By the time the excruciating and horribly
old-fashioned mess concludes, the world will hopefully not be holding its
breath for a return of agent English to accidentally save it from some future crisis.
No one can be that desperate, even in the season of popcorn fluff, unnecessary
3D and comfortable, unmemorable Oscar contenders.
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