[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





Back to Top
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.

Back to Top
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.

Back to Top
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.

Back to Top
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.

Back to Top
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.

Back to Top
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.

Back to Top

[Freya-dæg] When Love Hurts

Mike Myers' movies aren't necessarily the most high concept films around. Nor are they always the most original. But it's definitely a low mark when one of his movies takes gross-out comedy so far that it becomes hard to watch. The Love Guru is just such a Myers' movie.

It's only an hour and a half long but, because of all of the gross-out comedy, it's difficult to get involved with the story, characters, or dialog.

In fact, it felt like a three hour flick rather than the quick 90 minute fluff that Myers' generally produces. What's worse though, is that the story itself is so clearly defined and straightforward that it should be more difficult to throw the movie from its track.

The movie follows Guru Pitka (Mike Myers) who comes over from India to help a star player on the Toronto Maple Leafs (Darren Roanoke, played by Romany Malco). Setting the movie in Toronto is one of a few nods in the flick to Myers' Canadian origins, one of the few things in the film that work. At any rate, Pitka helps the player out so that he can get a spot on Oprah and become "the next Deepak Chopra."

The plot is made even simpler by its being given a Stanley Cup playoff time-frame, which at the least assures viewers that the movie has a definite end.

Characters like Guru Pitka and his master (played by Ben Kingsley) are indeed characters, and they embellish this otherwise plain story. But their embellishment is in shades of brown rather than shades of grey.

The rest of the cast is relatively lackluster. There are some exceptions, but I need an ace in the hole to give this one a chance at redemption, so I'll return to that later.

The core issues with this movie are that it constantly resorts to graphic, low brow humour that at points is truly gag-worthy (a fight using mops soaked in urine, for example) and an overall lack of subtlety.

Of course, these two things are generally staples of Mike Myers' movies. The exception with The Love Guru is that for some reason they're both served up in such grandiose proportions that it's difficult to figure out why or to get past them to the simple, lightly feel-good story.

But so little time spent on the bad, must mean that there are a lot of redeeming qualities here, right? Well, in a way.

I can name all of the good things about this movie off in a single list, actually: Stephen Colbert, Justin Timberlake, John Oliver, and Ben Kingsley. Yeah. That's right, Ben Kingsley. I'm not incredibly familiar with his career, and appearing here as Pitka's master may have been a move to play off type, but still. I was flummoxed when I saw him in this film. Flummoxed.

Now, of these four exceptional actors, Kingsley, Colbert (as Jay Kell), and Timberlake (as Jacques Grande) all played their parts exceedingly well. It's clear that despite the terribleness of the film otherwise, they were having fun doing it. But John Oliver (as Dick Pants) seemed to be phoning it in.

In all of his scenes I got the impression that Oliver just didn't want to be there. In fact, it seemed as though he'd gotten a call from Mike Meyers about a movie, got so excited that he didn't read the script and accepted without any hesitation only to realize what he had inextricably gotten himself into well after it was too late to back out.

That said, these four actors really do make the movie glow when they're on screen, even if those glows may be brief or very well-basted in silliness.

Actually, those four actors might also be what's wrong with this movie. They wouldn't have come cheap, and neither would the movie's special effects. These effects are concentrated in a scene where Mike Myers' head is smoothly CGI-ed onto a child's body and another where a third eye opens up on Darren's forehead in a very organic and nicely done way.

Not to mention, they must've spent a fair bit buying cover licenses for the three pop songs performed on sitar (though all of these are are definite highlights).

A lack of money in the film's account by the end, or maybe even before filming really hit its stride is clear in camerawork that makes some scenes look almost handy-cam quality. Editing must have also taken a hit since there a few jerky cuts between scenes that are no doubt where the deleted bits are included in the "uncut" version.

In spite of all this, there were a few laughs here and there. The words of Guru Hathasmalvena cracked me up as only syphilitic ramblings can. And some of the guru's book titles were ridiculous self-help parodies, but by the movie's half-way point all of the funny jokes run their course.

Though the line "keep the elephant running," might just stick with me for a while.

But context- or subtext-reliant lines and jokes are as sparse in this film as all-beef burger stands in New Delhi.

Surprisingly however, the romance aspect of the film involving Darren Roanoke and his estranged wife Prudence (Meagan Good) is played well and produces a surprisingly tender moment. Of course, this is buried under the rest of the film's scatological and penis jokes.

Colbert, Timberlake, Kingsley, Oliver, a joke voice-over by Morgan Freeman, and a cameo appearance by Daniel Tosh are all well and good, but these talents are better showcased in other things (like Oliver in The Bugle, for instance). Waiting through the movie to spot these actors, and the few effective moments would be tiresome rather than entertaining.

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes panned it (15%), audiences weren't much pleased (38%), and Harry Knowles (of Ain't it Cool News) even said that this movie is a career killer for Myers. And, I just can't find enough to really bring it back.

The Love Guru's got an amazing cast in many respects, a handful of actually tender or funny moments, some pretty impressive effects, and cool sitar pop song covers, but they're all bound together with a script that cripples the lot and a story that is just a vehicle for scatological jokes and bawdy puns.

Freya, leave this one where it lay - and, if you touched it, you should definitely wash your hands.