In a sentenceRowan Atkinson gets more laughs from a headset than the script gets from espionage
Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson) has his licence renewed and faces high-tech opponents with an old-fashioned approach to espionage. His confidence is undiminished, despite his limited understanding of the technology involved. Bough (Ben Miller), Ophelia Bhulatova (Olga Kurylenko), Jason Volta (Jake Lacy) and the Prime Minister (Emma Thompson) are among the people caught up in the mission. English needs to outwit his adversaries, but his own ignorance keeps getting in the way of an assignment that calls for rather more competence than he possesses.
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Rowan Atkinson’s physical comedy earns some laughs, but Johnny English Strikes Again has too little else to offer. The spy plot is thin, the technology jokes are tired, and the good routines remain isolated.
Johnny English Strikes Again is intermittently funny, which is a modest return from a comedy lasting 88 minutes. David Kerr has a reliable asset in Rowan Atkinson, whose commitment to English’s foolishness makes even familiar material briefly worth watching. William Davies’s screenplay asks that performance to cover too much thin plotting and too many predictable jokes. The gaps between the good routines are the trouble.
The performance depends on English never discovering how ridiculous he looks. His confidence has to remain intact while everything else goes wrong, and the physical precision makes that unreasonable certainty amusing even when the situation is familiar. We laughed at the virtual-reality routine, because his wholehearted response to imaginary danger gives the stupidity a clear purpose. For that stretch, David Kerr lets the performer do enough to make an obvious misunderstanding funny without needing to explain the joke.
William Davies’s handling of technology is less assured. The hackers’ pranks with traffic lights and an airport suggest other possibilities: modern systems can fail as spectacularly as English does. Yet the film mostly settles for the easier joke that an old-fashioned spy does not understand new equipment. That supplies a workable routine, but repeating it across a feature makes English’s ignorance increasingly tiresome, particularly when his mistakes are so easy to anticipate.
Emma Thompson’s Prime Minister is welcome partly because she gives the comedy a firmer presence than the jokes deserve. With Ben Miller as Bough and Olga Kurylenko as Ophelia Bhulatova, there is no shortage of performers around whom the writer might build a livelier farce. Instead, the supporting characters have too little comic independence from English. The film repeatedly comes back to his inadequacy, even when another character might have supplied a more interesting interruption.
Cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister and production designer Simon Bowles make the spy-film surroundings respectable enough, but there is little comedy in that respectability. The visual interest remains English’s posture and his stubborn certainty about how he ought to behave. David Kerr is better at giving that foolishness room than at making the espionage itself funny. The staging is cautious for a film whose chief attraction is a man making mistakes, and the surroundings seldom contribute another joke.
Mark Everson’s editing gives the individual routines more shape than the story connecting them. The trouble is not simply pace: shortening the pauses would not supply the missing surprises. Howard Goodall’s music provides energy, but it cannot make a familiar situation feel freshly thought through. At 88 minutes, this ought to be a light diversion. Too often, the routines feel separated by a story that offers little pleasure of its own.
We do not need a spy spoof to offer penetrating thoughts on technology, and broad laughs would be enough if they arrived more regularly. Against that modest standard, this remains a mixed proposition. Admirers of Rowan Atkinson’s physical comedy will find passages worth their attention, though even they may lose interest between them. For a comedy this short, it asks for too much patience.
Most critics find Johnny English Strikes Again tired and short of laughs, though Rowan Atkinson’s physical comedy earns recurring praise. His timing and commitment give even some disappointed reviewers something to enjoy, with the virtual-reality training sequence repeatedly singled out as a comic highlight. The warmer reviews find enough humiliation and slapstick to make the predictable material entertaining, without claiming that the spy spoof has much freshness left.
The divide is chiefly over how far Atkinson can compensate for the writing. Reservations cluster around a flimsy plot, stale spy jokes and an uncertain approach to technology and old-fashioned espionage. The spread runs from modest enjoyment to outright dismissal: HeyUGuys finds the film entertaining despite its underdeveloped ideas, while the Los Angeles Times finds its one-joke approach lifeless. Several mixed reviews occupy the ground between them, reporting real laughs but a dated, uneven film.
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Read the full review →O'Sullivan finds the film daft and predictable but says its comedy still prompts guffaws. She particularly praises Rowan Atkinson's committed physical performance and the carefully observed buffoonish character.
Read the full review →Ebiri finds the film mildly entertaining, though not sharp or funny enough to fulfill its potential. He praises its steady stream of humiliation comedy and the heavy-handed symbolism of English battling high-tech villains in knight’s armor.
Read the full review →The critic finds the film mildly watchable but largely unsuccessful, with its parody and technology jokes failing to catch fire. They single out the VR training sequence as a funny highlight that recalls Mr. Bean’s sly malice.
Read the full review →Quinlan finds the sequel tediously unfunny and its central character stiflingly ignorant. She singles out the hackers’ traffic-light and airport pranks as among its few funny moments.
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The Pink Panther · not reviewed yetAnother elaborately confident incompetent, with more room for mistakes to develop.
The Man Who Knew Too Little · not reviewed yetAn innocent abroad mistakes espionage for entertainment, with rather better comic complications.
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of SpiesFor a sharper spy parody that makes its hero’s prejudices count.
The Accidental Spy · not reviewed yetMore vigorous action for those who enjoy espionage with an unprepared participant.
The Naked GunA similarly oblivious lawman, surrounded by a much higher density of jokes.
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