[Freya-dæg] Johnny English Reborn Improved

{An example of Atkinson's Mr. Bean-esque mugging in Johnny English Reborn. Image from Pfangirl Through The Looking Glass.}

Introduction
Plot Summary
The Good
The Bad
Judgment
Closing





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Introduction

Johnny English Reborn is one of those movies that you hope is better than it's predecessor (especially given the 8 year span between them) and that gives you a performance like a trained monkey at a piano recital. The judgment on this one's going to be all hush hush until the very last minute.

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Plot Summary

The movie's plot follows from the ending of the first.

Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson) has since become a real MI7 agent, but has lost his knighthood because of his failure on a major mission in Mozambique. However, because he gets the call from Pegasus (played by Gillian Anderson) to come out of suspension, he returns to the agency and takes on a mission involving the mysterious group "Vortex." Some slapstick gags, antics, and a Behavioral Psychologist love interest (Kate Sumner, played by Rosamund Pike) later, Johnny's the only one who can foil Vortex's plan to assassinate the Premier of China while he's meeting with the UK's Prime Minister in a high security Swedish fortress.

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The Good

Showing some of the true colors of a worthy sequel, the main character in this flick has changed. Johnny English is no longer the bumbling new agent who has no clue whatsoever, now he's the bumbling experienced agent who has every clue necessary but still has his penchant for mixing things up fully running the show.

This character growth might sound like a minor improvement, but the growth helps to deflect a lot of the predictable jokes that may otherwise have come up, and it allows Atkinson to deliver many of the comedic moments in a style that's similar to the one he use for Mr. Bean.

Particularly in the section of the movie where he's fleeing capture on a souped-up motorized wheelchair. The section takes many of the conventions of a regular chase (the interruption, the surprise appearance) and uses them to comedic effect. Dave White of movies.com described the film as "a reasonably steady stream of closed-mouth chuckles over comic incidents," but the wheelchair scene turned those chuckles into guffaws.

Speaking of other reviewers - another major criticism of the movie, lobbed by Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, is that the movie puts way too much emphasis on jokes that appeal to "...children who laugh at the sight of men being repeatedly kicked in the groin."

Maybe watching the Love Guru can forever change your perspective on cheap gags, but Johnny English Reborn really doesn't use crotch-hit gags that often. In fact, the writer seems to be wary enough of them to veer left of a few potential instances of the gag throughout the film.

However predictable the movie may be in some ways, it mostly failed the major predictability test: whether or not Johnny cross dresses at any point in the film ala Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

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The Bad

Overall, Johnny English Reborn's major problem is with its supporting cast of characters. Many of them are acceptable because they have such small roles, but Kate, the love interest, and Agent One are two dimensional at best.

In fact, the entire romance sub-plot of the movie appears to have been added in a quick and dirty kind of way. It's obvious that Kate's interest in Johnny starts off as clinical (as she herself points out) but we never really see it become emotional, it's as if the integral we're-a-couple-now scene is missing from the movie.

Agent One, aka Simon Ambrose, (Dominic West) is similarly thin in character, being simply the ideal agent who's more than he seems.

The other supporting cast member worth mentioning is English's sidekick, Colin Tucker (Daniel Kaluuya). Tucker's character is actually given some loose back story, and so he's something of a 2.5 dimensional character, but there simply isn't enough done with him to make him substantially different from Bough (pronounced "Boff") in the first movie, except, just as is the case with English, he's an actual agent rather than an office worker.

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Judgment

Johnny English Reborn isn't worthy of the extra word added to the title. "Reborn" is simply pushing things too far. "Improved" would've worked nicely and is much more accurate.

The improvements in some of the characters, in the use and execution of the jokes and gags, and in the character of Johnny himself suggest that the writers for this one (screenplay: Hamish McColl; story: William Davies) are an improvement over the writers (Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and William Davies) for the last movie , but unless a movie by the name of Johnny English Renewed comes out in 2020 you shouldn't expect too much from this series.

That said, Johnny English Reborn is an improvement over the original in terms of comedy, but it steps backwards in terms of characters - a lot of this movie seems to be here simply because the standard elements of a spy movie are necessary for the comedic premise. Yet, the major thrust of that premise, Johnny English himself, has been improved, and so, though narrowly, this one gets a save.

Freya, swoop down and save this film from the likes of Gigli and The Love Guru.

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Closing

Next week watch this blog for the conclusion to my four part series on wind power in Ontario, an article on the newest news, and a search for the good in London Boulevard.

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[Freya-dæg] A Look Back at Gigli ("...it rhymes with really.")

{Some off-screen tenderness. Photo by Mel/Getty Images.}

Introduction
The Plot
The Good
The Bad
Judgment
Closing






Introduction

Nine years ought to be enough time to give you some perspective on a piece of art, right? Even if it was considered utterly terrible when it came out.

That's the thinking behind this review of Gigli, the 2003 flop starring Ben Affleck (as the title character Larry Gigli), Jennifer Lopez (as Ricky), and Justin Bartha (as Baywatch-obsessed Brian). So, now that it's 2012, is it possible to view this movie as anything other than the utter waste of time that critics regarded it as those 9 years ago? Let's find out.

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The Plot

Gigli follows Larry Gigli as he follows through on a peculiar job. His employer, Louis (played by Lenny Venito) asks him to essentially kidnap and keep someone's kid brother (Brian) for the purpose of extortion. But, Larry's kind of a screw-up, and so Louis also assigns Ricky to the job, without Larry's knowing it. This completes the patchwork nuclear family that is the movie's focus, and the two navigate the difficulties of keeping a young man with "mental deficiencies" occupied and of their own emotional baggage while trying to complete their job.

Now, for the purpose of marketing, the movie's classed as a "romantic comedy." It does have the basic requirements to fit this bill, namely, two characters who bond over a weird/comic situation and end the movie closer than they were at the start. But, the relationship between these two isn't quite romantic in the way that the genre designation implies.

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The Good

Nonetheless, the movie features two cameos that are worth seeing.

{Photo from UGO.com.}

Christopher Walken steps in as an info-dumping cop who reveals to Gigli and Ricky that they're holding the brother of a federal prosecutor. To his credit, Walken also delivers one of the only laughs of the movie with his surreal line about what might happen if you put pie à la mode on your head: "your tongue would slap your brains out trying to get to it."

{Photo from the Simply Shaka blog}

Al Pacino comes on later in the movie, as the character that the kidnapping is supposed to help. His performance strangely mixes an over the top style with a cool, understated demeanor. His is also among the darker scenes of the movie as he blows someone's brains out and the camera pleasantly zooms into a fish nibbling away at the detritus. It's a curious shot that stands as an apt metaphor for the movie - it turns your brain into fish-food, if you let it.

The movie also co-stars Affleck's naked torso and music video levels of J-Lo's bare skin.

However, cameos - especially short, single-scene deals - and cheese/beefcake are not as potent a force for good as they could be. Especially not alone.

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The Bad

Let's start with the premise. The idea of two mismatched mob contractors being assigned to watch a young man who is mentally disabled sounds strangely like the next generation of reality TV: a couple would be paired up, and then would adopt a child with a disability for a few days, and the audience at home would sit back and watch it all unfold. And unfold it does in the movie, as antics follow and, of course, we're treated to some moments that are supposed to be endearing.

Unfortunately, these almost endearing scenes end with weird lines like this about where they film Baywatch "That's where the sex is," or about what looking at the women of Bay Watch does to Brian: "they make my penis sneeze." Curious, sure, but the stuff of a rom com?

After all, one of the key parts of the movie is the romance between Gigli and Ricky.

To be fair, it seems like writer/director/producer Martin Brest was trying something new here. Trying to shake up the romantic comedy genre.

For, unlike in other romantic comedies where the person "in control" of the relationship shifts from one act (or even scene) to the next with comic results, Gigli puts Ricky into a position of control as firm as her own, co-starring, butt.

Sure, it's refreshing to see a movie centered on a romance where the woman is in control. But adding Ricky's lesbianism and dissatisfaction with men, and Gigli's being so caught up in his own masculinity that it would make overly macho characters like Vigoro of Skies of Arcadia wonder about what he's hiding brings the movie's romantic aspect tumbling down.

{Vigoro, showing Gigli how it's done.}

Further, because the center of control in the Ricky/Gigli relationship never really changes there's very little sense of an interplay between the two characters.

For example, when Louis tells Gigli that they'll need to cut off and mail out Brian's finger to show that they're serious, Ricky takes Gigli aside to chat with him about it. This leads to her asking if he's with her and he says "sure," which leads to her saying that "sure" isn't enough of a commitment and that he should say "yes." So she asks if he's for not cutting off Brian's thumb again, and rather than trying to take back some power in the relationship, or at least being a little flippant, Gigli exhales a breathy "yes."

The scene's potential for laughs is lost, Ricky is shown to have power *over* Gigli rather than to be sharing it with him and the romantic tone is irreversibly set.

It doesn't help matters that throughout the movie the two have their defenses up and bristling, Gigli showing far more signs of slackening than Ricky by the movie's end. Gigli's dopey-ness around Ricky is in character, but the dope being romantically entangled with the powerful woman doesn't really make for a romantic movie scenario. It's better suited to a Saturday morning cartoon.

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Judgment

I can appreciate the unique weirdness of the premise. And the genuinely entertaining cameos. But the core of the movie is off kilter. The world wasn't ready for a rom-com where the female character can seriously say "I thought you wanted to be my bitch" in 2003, and it still doesn't seem to be in 2012.

So, Freya, cut off the thumbs so that Walken and Pacino can be saved, but leave the rest to further rot.

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Closing

Next week, check back for a stream of consciousness take on freelance writing, an essay about some of the newest news, and for a review of the 1995 Jeff Goldblum horror flick, Hideaway.

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