I Watch Films: Johnny English Strikes Again

 

Johnny English Strikes Again

A cyber-attack on MI7 reveals all their agents so they recall several retired ones. Amongst them is Johnny English, who has been working as a geography teacher (he is teaching his pupils espionage). Arriving at MI7 he encounters three elderly agents (Michael Gambon, Charles Dance and Edward Fox) and accidently incapacitates them with a gas grenade pen.

English gets the mission, picks up his old assistant Bough (from Johnny English but not Johnny English Reborn) and a lot of non-networked equipment including a petrol car. They drive to France, infiltrate the restaurant the attack came from, figure out that the restaurant’s wi-fi was used by a passing boat, causing chaos while posing as waiters. On board the boat they discover a giant server farm, and also a Russian agent (played by Olga Kurylenko, from Quantum Of Solace).

The boat, the “Dot Calm” is owned by tech billionaire Jason Volta. Volta is in London with the Prime Minister (Emma Thompson) and offered to fix all the UK’s data problems in return for access to the data; she enthusiastically agrees. More than that, she decides to take him to the G12 summit of world leaders to give them the opportunity.

English finally realises the Russian agent is a spy; finds out that Volta is behind it all. This is politically difficult, and he manages to lose the evidence (this is a comedy about a spy who’s bad at being a spy). They try to break into Volta’s mansion, get caught and taken off the case, so have to break into the Scottish Castle the G12 summit is taking place in for the finale.

I’d like to sum up the Johnny English films here, but that’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. They’re about a James Bond-style spy who isn’t good at his job – but sometimes he is good at his job. They’re about a spy who prefers the old school style of spying, guns and gadgets, not this modern way of… not-guns and gadgets. This could be in conversation with actual James Bond films, except those films also don’t have a coherent argument on that (they want to be modern, gritty and slick, and also same old James, only more so). Still, you could make something of it, but Johnny English isn’t interested. Rowan Atkinson, playing English, wants to be the suave, sexy agent doing amazing stunts (especially in cars), the naif who has to come good, and also the oaf who gets everything wrong. I'm not summing up because I don't think it adds up to more than the sum of it's parts.

The other, worse, reason not to sum up is they’re making another one.

Watch This: Spy comedy with some fun characters and a few good jokes
Don’t Watch This: Less interesting and funny than the previous installment