Not so Stoopid Agent By Fearless Young Orphan Johnny English Reborn (2011), Directed by Oliver Parker What a strange sequel, and after I lambasted the original Johnny English, it is surprisingly that I was willing to sit through a descendant-film such as this. Such is the burden of being a fearless young orphan! Pfft, I’m just kidding around. Y’all know I’ll watch just about anything. The truth is, the original Johnny English was so bad and unfunny that I figured the sequel almost could not be any worse. I believe I said to my companion, “the only way it could be worse is if they kicked puppies.” Better nobody be kicking puppies! So I don’t know what the hell happened here – look at this, it’s eight years after the original Johnny English and they’ve got a completely respectable cast in place, including Rosamund Pike (an actual Bond girl, albeit from the terrible Die Another Day), Dominic West, and the so-awesome-she’d-turn-me-to-the-other-team Gillian Anderson. What was going on in the planning meetings? I’d love to have been a fly on the wall. I wasn’t, so I’ll have to guess. I think this was a rejected script from something else and the Rowan Atkinson people snapped it up and said, “it’s a spy spoof, let’s put poor Johnny English back into the game, what the hell,” and then Satan fronted the money for the project and here we are. But I tease—to an extent—because surprisingly enough, this is a far better effort than its predecessor. Oh, it’s still not very good. I certainly wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to see it unless you’re simply a devoted fan of one of the stars. However, the major flaws of the first Johnny English film have been either rectified or significantly improved, so that we have now a passable comedy and a much better spy “spoof.” Okay, plot first. Johnny English is called back into action after being disgraced from MI:7 for a botched operation in Mozambique. He’s been spending his time training with monks in the Himalayas or something like that. Why MI:7 actually wants Johnny English back is a matter best left to the imagination, or just chalk it up to this: he’s the star of the film, so they have to invite him. The point is that he’s needed to discover what a turncoat agent knows about the impending assassination of China’s leader. Back at MI:7, Johnny quickly establishes himself as being an idiot once again, much to the consternation of Pegasus (that’s Gillian Anderson), the head of MI:7. She seems like a pretty with-it kind of woman – everyone at MI:7 acts like they know what they’re doing, you know. This was a trouble from the first film, as I’d mentioned: capable people inexplicably accepting a man in their ranks who is obviously under qualified to perform the activities of daily living, never mind complicated espionage. But fine, we’ll try to move on from there. There is an amusing running gag: MI:7 has been bought by Toshiba, so now the Toshiba name and logo is on everything. Now, here’s one thing that Reborn gets right: it makes an effort to actually spoof James Bond films. Johnny has a tour of Research and Development and it’s a pretty dead-on send-up of visiting Q’s laboratory. Johnny is given some gadgets and a totally outfitted Rolls Royce that responds to voice commands (as Johnny says admiringly, “It’s the Rolls Royce of automobiles!”). Things like this are a welcome sight. Once again, an interested woman who is far, far out of Johnny’s league is in the picture: that is Rosamund Pike as behavioral psychologist Kate Sumner, who happens to believe Johnny when he says that the Mozambique catastrophe was not his fault. Well, I’ve seen the video, and it Spies get cool cars. Even bad spies. This is a rule. looked to me that while it wasn’t Johnny’s fault precisely, he certainly didn’t help matters any. Never mind. She’s going to be his go-to girl when the poo hits the fan. Dominic West takes up all the handsome in the room as Agent Ambrose, the requisite suave, sophisticated Bond-type to whom Johnny can feel inferior to and admiring of. But maybe Agent Ambrose is a little bit too suave, eh? Off we go on the adventure, which is a preposterous load of horse hockey about three expert assassins, each of whom possesses a third of the key to a “secret weapon” that is going to be used to kill the Chinese leader. Whatever – nobody really cares about the method in movies like this. The three pieces of the key serve as Macguffins to lead us from one person to the next, and to signify who the good guys and bad guys are. This is lame, but not really any lamer than some of the goofier Bond plots, so we won’t count it against the film. The plot does serve to move Johnny around to some exotic locales and one surprisingly amusing chase scene. Johnny learned something from the monks, it seems, and it was something we dearly wish he’d known in the first film: he’s an aging little man who isn’t really going to threaten anybody, and his complete lack of brute strength is showcased by having him calmly, almost lackadaisically, pursue an athletic young man who is parkour-ing himself all over Beijing. Johnny manages to keep up more or less by strolling along, and then pushes the joke into pleasant surrealism by commandeering a yacht full of wealthy British and taking them on a “terribly exciting” chase. The Bond-reminiscing continues by visiting familiar places, such as a golf course (remember the “intense” golf game in Goldfinger?) and later, the Swiss Alps (the scene of so many famous Bond interludes, including memorable moments in Moonraker). There, Johnny must stop the assassination of the Chinese leader. You’ve got to hand it to Atkinson, who is a talented physical comedian even when his acting isn’t top notch. He can manage to mine humor out of waving his hands in the air like he “just don’t care.” I also had a completely unexpected, laugh-out- loud moment when Johnny uses a certain spy gadget exactly the wrong way at exactly the wrong time – it caught me off guard and had me in stitches. I had not expected that. So, there are many reasons why Johnny English Reborn surpasses its forefather, and the most important one is that it’s actually rather funny sometimes. Not all the time. The jokes still tend to go on too long, Johnny makes a few of those oopsie mistakes that require him to embarrass himself awkwardly, and it still makes no sense that these Gillian Anderson may seem too classy for capable people would allow him to Johnny English Reborn, but it was more play a function in their midst. But dignified than the series finale of The X-Files. someone wised up, that’s for sure, because we also have 1) some enjoyable Bond-spoofing and a lot of moments that will make Bond fans smile; 2) humor that actually arises out of the situation and capitalizes on Atkinson’s strengths rather than his character’s absolute, inexplicable idiocy; and 3) an overall plot that is ridiculous but not distractingly so. After all, a good spy flick’s plot is to serve as a figurative vehicle for its star to drive, and nothing more. Good job, Johnny English Reborn. Saying that this is a better film than Johnny English is not saying much, because Burger King’s staff training videos are better films than Johnny English. And the fact that it had a terrible predecessor makes me kinder to Reborn than I probably should be – but then again, I got about three really good laughs out of this one and a lot of pleasant James Bond déjà-vu moments, and Gillian Anderson was there in some wicked sexy dresses, and there are worse ways to spend an evening. .