Movie Review: Johnny English Reborn

The first Johnny English came out back in 2003 and it wasn't very funny. A silly-in-all-the-wrong-ways movie that was trying to be both a spoof of spy movies and a spy movie in its own right and it just didn't work. Therefore I did not think for one second they would make a sequel.

Johnny English Reborn movieBut I guess money talks (the first one made $160 million on a $40 million budget) as alas, eight years later, we have Johnny English Reborn, the sequel nobody asked for. This time the titular character (played once more by Rowan Atkinson) is off living as a monk in the mountains of Tibet after a botched mission some years prior (this is how they work into the story the gap between the first movie and this). One day, surprise, surprise, he is called back into action by MI7 to go on a mission involving an assassination attempt. Hilarity ensues...

...Or at least that's what you'd hope for. But sadly Johnny English Reborn is as tired and repetitive as it was the first time around (perhaps even more so). Despite an incessant barrage of jokes, ranging from visual gags to "witty" wordplay, the film tries its all to get every possibly laugh it can out of everything. And points for trying, absolutely, but the trouble is you can literally predict every gag before they happen, one of the things you certainly don't want in a comedy. It goes for the cheapest, obvious, bottom of the barrel humour time and time again. I realise this is a movie aimed as much at kids as it is at adults but there has to be something beyond the level of humour that delivers, for example, Atkinson in a body bag repeatedly banging into a wall or jokes about a special gadget turning his voice squeaky. There are at least 60 separate gags in the movie and I laughed a grand total of twice (and even those were just small giggles).

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Article Author: Ross Miller

I am a film critic and blogger, and have been so since late 2007, going from starting my own movie review website, Movie World (which is still running), and then moving on to writing for various movie blogs.

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  • 1 - Ent

    Nov 16, 2011 at 4:51 am

    When it comes to comedy there comes some faces in our mind like Charli cahplin and MR Bean. I do not have that luck to see Charli Chaplins work when he was alive but have this luck to watch Rowan Atkinson alive. When the first movie Johnny English come i was like wow!!!

    I love that movie so much and this year i was waiting for that movie and finally this movie comes to the silver screen and wow is same word. this movie is full in entertainment so scope to tell How bad the time gone.

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