Johnny English Reborn Review

As it seems increasingly unlikely that my review of Johnny English Reborn will ever appear on the website of the London Student, here it is on my blog!

We’ve been starved of a good British spy film for quite a while now. Johnny English Reborn, sequel to 2003’s Johnny English, delivers a good performance from Rowan Atkinson, but seems to be unsure if it wants to be a spy-spoof or an actual spy film.

The humour in Johnny English Reborn simply isn’t up to scratch. Jokes are repeated far too often, and are visibly telegraphed. There’s set-up right at the beginning for a joke about getting kicked in the balls that I saw coming about an hour and a half before its use. Whereas the first Johnny English rather masterfully bombarded you with a constant stream of slap-stick and embarrassing humour, Johnny English Reborn never quite manages to find the right note to make you laugh.

The film kicks off with the inept British superspy having left MI7 in disgrace, after a botched mission causes the death of an African premier. Now, no longer Sir Johnny, he visits a Tibetan monastery to rediscover himself. After the pre-requisite training montage, he’s summoned back to London by MI7 post- haste for a mission that only he could possibly carry out.

It’s here that the film drops its first clanger of a joke. Apparently the intelligence services have been sponsored by Toshiba. Johnny walks into MI7 headquarters to find it renamed Toshiba British Intelligence Service, manned in the manner of a computer repair call-centre. Quite why we’re supposed to find this amusing is never explained (perhaps it’s because they put their logo, “Spying for you” on their parachutes) though it’s not long before English is off on a mission to stop a cadre of international assassins from killing the Chinese leader.

It’s here that things start going wrong with the film. With a less-than-excellent supporting cast (despite a good turn by Dominic West as the new Agent One) Rowan Atkinson has a much harder time when he has to effectively carry the film single-handedly. The excellent Ben Miller sadly doesn’t return, and is instead replaced as English’s sidekick by new agent Tucker (Daniel Kaluyaa) who does a lot of being the suffering straight man and even more of delivering particularly unfunny lines. Gillian Anderson does a turn as the new straight-laced head of MI7, whilst former Bond-girl Rosamund Pike plays the love interest that the film thrusts on Johnny English with but the thinnest of excuses to properly explain why they fall for each other (or in this case, why she falls for Johnny).

Despite the film’s various flaws, it still manages to be a mostly entertaining romp. The storyline of the mysterious cabal who may have infiltrated MI7 plays out quite well, and the film manages to have a fair few chase sequences and fight scenes that grab the occasional laugh, though there’s barely any jokes that you’ll be remembering and chuckling about the next day.

Indeed that’s probably the most damning criticism I could give Johnny English Reborn. When it tries to be a spy film it doesn’t do anything that stands out and its jokes miss as often as they get a laugh. Rowan Atkinson is a brilliant physical comedy actor, and this film simply doesn’t give him much to do. At times its lack of good gags makes it feel like a typical spy film, and it’s certainly not going to be challenging James Bond or Jason Bourne anytime soon.

Despite this poor second effort, I still find myself hoping there will be a third, hopefully better than the weak retread of the first film that is Johnny English Reborn. Maybe it’s because (unlike most critics) I really enjoyed the first Johnny English. I still find myself singing the original film’s theme song, A Man For All Seasons – there’s a lack of a good theme in Reborn either.