Director: Oliver Parker
Star rating: **
After years of honing his unconventional secret-agent skills in Asia, Johnny English (played by Rowan Atkinson) is back in action and his mission is to stop the assassination attempt on the Chinese prime minister.
In this sequel, Mr English certainly doesn’t play by the agent’s rulebook. His inexplicably effective world-saving actions come with the help of the latest hi-tech gadgets. Johnny tries to unravel a web of conspiracy running throughout the KGB, CIA and even MI7, and is being supported by straight-faced Kate Summers (played by Rosamund Pike).
We find Johnny mistakenly attacking an innocent woman, sitting on a cat and, predictably, pulling faces. One stand-out moment sees him having trouble with the height mechanism of a chair during an important meeting. Here, the idea itself is strong enough to sell the gag. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is filled with slapstick just for the sake of it. The wheelchair-chase scene is one of many examples of the repeatedly ludicrous and unsuccesful attempts at humour.
There are a few moments that have the potential to be funny, but director Oliver Parker just doesn’t provide any kind of framework for the excellent supporting cast to work from. Rosamund Pike, Gillian Anderson and Dominic West certainly deserve better material than this. It’s a shame that this poor script fails to properly exploit the comic talents of Rowan Atkinson, who remains, undoubtedly, one of the masters of physical comedy.
You can expect only four or five decent laughs from this secret-agent spoof; it’s much more likely to make you cringe at how inadequate it is rather than cause uncontrollable bursts of laughter.
The first movie was one of the all time classics in my opinion, I cannot wait for the second!