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A Universal release. Written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and William Davies; directed by Peter Howitt; starring Rowan Atkinson, Natalie Imbruglia and John Malkovich.  Since the Zucker brothers (and Jim Abrahams) unleashed Detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) in 1982's Police Squad and more famously in 1988's The Naked Gun, the bar for thickheaded crime fighters was raised considerably. Nielsen's straight-laced appearance and delivery made him look the part of a serious detective, even if his character was nearly brain-dead in all other respects. But therein lies the key for humor generated from stupidity: it's funnier to see a real person hit his head than a cartoonish idiot. If there was one lesson to be learned from the strange void of laughs in Johnny English, this should be it. Starring the former Mr. Bean, Rowan Atkinson, Johnny English follows a Drebin-like member of MI-6 (the British secret service agency that is also home to James Bond), not so coincidentally named Johnny English. Bereft of common sense and control over his body, English goes from a desk jockey to star spy when all of the other agents are killed in an explosion. English's first task is to find out who is behind the recent theft of the crown jewels. Directed by Peter Howitt (Sliding Doors), the most surprising facet of Johnny English doesn't come with its hackneyed script or the extreme repetition of several jokes, but the fact that so much of this film feels directly lifted from the aforementioned Naked Gun series. When English shoots his superior's secretary with a knock-out dart, I couldn't help be reminded of the time Ted shoots Ed in the neck with a knock-out dart in the first Naked Gun. When English clumsily tries to cover up what he's done, it seemed merely a rehashing of the scene with Drebin's attempts to keep Vincent Ludwig from learning what had happened to his prized lionfish. Johnny English's villain even has the same name as one of the villains in the second Naked Gun: Sauvage. Johnny English has some redeeming features--Atkinson's one-on-none fight with a non-existent assailant is quite amusing--but these are drastically muted in the long run because the majority of the film feels stolen from other places. And sadly in a lot of cases, the new material just isn't that good; there were only so many times I could stomach to watch English voraciously prattle on about something to a crowd of people only to learn that his words were contradicted by something positioned directly behind him. There is no denying Atkinson's talent as a physical comedian, it's just a shame to see him so terribly and horribly wasted here.
chris neumer yes, it's true: Co-writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have also penned Die Another Day and are credited with writing the script to the latest Bond film, tenatively titled Bond 21. |
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