Johnny English (2003) Review

"The word "mistake", sir, is not one that appears in my dictionary."
-Johnny English





After the deaths of all of MI7's top secret agents, the secret service is forced to send Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson) into the field.  English is basically the worst secret agent ever, but he is England's only hope of stopping Pascal Sauvage (John Malkovich), a wealthy, French, prison owner, from taking over the country.

I am a huge James Bond fan and with a 3rd Johnny English movie out, I figured now is as good a time as any to watch this series.  I feel obligated to watch any James Bond parody, so how does Johnny English do?  Let's have a look...


What Works:

First in foremost, this movie is funny.  Sure, there are plenty of immature jokes, which I'll get to later, but there is a lot of solid physical comedy.  Moments like Johnny accidentally throwing his coat out the window cracked me up and there were plenty of hilarious moments throughout.

Rowan Atkinson does a great job as the titular spy.  I love how clueless he is and how he creates more problems for himself by trying to make himself look better.  His fight with an imaginary assailant is one of the best parts of the film and Atkinson sells every ridiculous moment with ease.

The car chase involving the tow truck was really creative and a lot of fun.  It was genuinely exciting and a much better sequence than I was expecting out of this film.  

Finally, I do like that they gave Johnny one or two moments throughout the film of him being somewhat competent.  I like that he wasn't 100% a buffoon and that he could occasionally be capable, even if it was extremely rare.


What Sucks:

Like I said earlier, some of the humor is very immature, and while some of it works, not all of it does.  I'm sure kids would like some of the immature jokes, but I didn't care much for them.

I really disliked Tim Pigott-Smith's character, Pegasus, the head of MI7.  He never gave English a chance to explain why he broke into Sauvage's office and is completely closed off to the possibility that Sauvage is behind everything.  M from James Bond would never have done that.  He or she would have at least heard Bond out.  It was just some frustrating and lazy writing to get English taken off the case and it could have been handled much better.


Verdict:

Johnny English is a fun little movie with a bunch of funny moments, a great performance from Rowan Atkinson, and one really well done action sequence.  Not all of the humor works and there was some lazy writing around the character of Pegasus, but, for the most part, this movie has got it going on.

 7/10: Good  

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