Psycho's Movie Reviews #402: Johnny English Reborn (2011)

Johnny English Reborn is a 2011 spy action comedy film directed by Oliver Parker and written by Hamish McColl from a story by William Davies. A sequel to Johnny English (2003) and the second instalment in the Johnny English series, it is a British-American venture produced by StudioCanal, Relativity Media and Working Title Films, and distributed by Universal Pictures. The film stars Rowan Atkinson (reprising his role as the title character) alongside Gillian Anderson, Dominic West, Rosamund Pike, Daniel Kaluuya and Richard Schiff as new characters.

Much like its predecessor, the film parodies the James Bond film series and clichés of the spy genre and marks Atkinson and Tim McInnerny's second collaboration after the series Blackadder. Johnny English Reborn was met with mixed reviews but has grossed a total of $160 million worldwide.

The film was released in the United Kingdom on 7 October 2011, and topped the country's box office. It was later released in North America on 21 October 2011. A sequel to the film, Johnny English Strikes Again was released in October 2018.

Plot

Eight years after the events of the first film, Johnny English has been training in Tibet to recover from the shame of a failed mission to protect the newly elected president in Mozambique, which cost him his knighthood. Called back into service by MI7 under Pamela Thornton or "Pegasus", English must investigate an assassination plot of the Chinese Premier during talks with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron. He meets fellow agent Simon Ambrose, MI7's quartermaster Patch Quartermain, and assistant and agent Colin Tucker.

In Hong Kong, English finds former CIA agent Titus Fisher, a member of Vortex, the group responsible for sabotaging English's Mozambique mission. Vortex holds a secret weapon unlocked by three keys, held by himself and two others. Fisher is killed by an elderly assassin disguised as a cleaner, and an accomplice steals his key. English chases the thief and recovers the key, only to have it taken by a faux flight attendant en route to London. He is humiliated in a meeting with the Foreign Secretary and Pegasus when he attempts to present the key and the conspiracy. He also mistakenly attacks Pegasus’s mother twice after encountering the Killer Cleaner.

Kate Sumner, MI7's behavioural psychologist, uses hypnosis to help English recall his suppressed memory of the Mozambique incident, revealing Vortex operative, Russian spy Artem Karlenko, is posing as millionaire Sergei Pudovkin. English and Tucker meet Karlenko at a golf course outside London, but the Killer Cleaner critically injures him. English and Tucker bring him to a hospital by helicopter, but he dies after revealing the third key is held by a mole in MI7.

Over dinner, English confides with Ambrose about the mole, and Ambrose tells him he suspects Quartermain. Tucker confronts Ambrose about him being the traitor, but English naively dismisses Tucker, letting Ambrose go with Karlenko's key. English confronts Quartermain, but realizes he has been framed as the third Vortex member. Chased by MI7 agents, English manages to escape to Sumner's flat.

Reviewing footage of the Mozambique mission, Sumner sees the assassin was manipulated by a mind control drug, Timoxeline Barbebutenol. Ambrose comes to pick her up, and English realizes he is the mole. Evading the Killer Cleaner by jumping down a garbage chute, English apologizes to Tucker, persuading him to join in infiltrating Le Bastion, a fortress in the Swiss Alps where the talks are to be held.

At the fortress, English accidentally activates a distress beacon, alerting the guards to their presence. He commands Tucker to knock him out and put him inside a body bag so they will be taken into the fortress. Inside, English manages to escape the body bag and warns Pegasus of the threat, but accidentally consumes a drink spiked with the drug, and subdues Pegasus on Ambrose's command.

Assigning English as the Prime Minister's bodyguard in place of Pegasus, Ambrose orders him to assassinate the Chinese Premier using a pistol disguised as lipstick, initially designed for Pegasus; English tries to resist the drug. Tucker interrupts Ambrose's communication feed with music before Ambrose resets it, exposing himself as the traitor. English resists again and shoots Ambrose, who escapes while the drug enters its lethal stage and English loses consciousness.

Sumner arrives and revives English with a passionate kiss. English pursues Ambrose down the mountainside, and they engage in a fistfight in a cable car. English overpowers Ambrose, but falls out of the carriage. Ambrose shoots at him, who tries to use his spy umbrella as a bulletproof shield, which is actually a missile launcher when he closes it. The missile destroys the carriage, killing Ambrose.

Vortex is shut down and English has his knighthood reinstated by the Queen. During the ceremony, the Killer Cleaner, disguised as the Queen, attacks English with a sword before fleeing, leading English to restrain the real Queen. He only realises his mistake when the assassin is caught by the royal guards and police.

During the credits, English prepares dinner for Sumner to the tune of "In the Hall of the Mountain King".

Production

On 28 March 2007, Atkinson confirmed on Richard & Judy that a script for a second film was being worked on. In an interview for Mr. Bean's Holiday, Atkinson also stated that there was quite a moderate chance for a sequel. On 8 April 2010, Universal Pictures announced that they were producing a sequel to Johnny English, taking place seven years following the first film.

In June 2010, it was announced that Daniel Kaluuya had been added to the cast. In July 2010, Ben Miller, who featured as the sidekick 'Bough' in Johnny English, said he had not been approached to reprise his role. On 10 July 2010, Deadline Hollywood reported that Gillian Anderson would be playing a MI7 secret agent named Pamela Head.

Filming began on 11 September 2010, in Central London at Cannon Street, with further production scheduled for the week beginning 13 September 2010, at Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire and later in Hawley Woods in Hampshire, Macau and Hong Kong.

Filming took place on The Mall, London in Central London on 25 September 2010. Filming also took place in Kent, along the A299 carriageway and Cliffs End, Ramsgate. The "Johnny English Theme" song from the original film is used four times in the score. Ben Miller, who played Bough in the previous movie, appeared, but his scenes were cut from the final film.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Johnny English Reborn was originally going to be released on 29 July 2011. The film was then pushed back to 16 September 2011, however, it was delayed again; this time to 7 October 2011.

Much like its predecessor, the film received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 38% of 91 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 4.81/10. The website's consensus is "Arguably a marginal improvement on its mostly forgotten predecessor, Johnny English Reborn nonetheless remains mired in broad, tired spy spoofing that wastes Rowan Atkinson's once considerable comedic talent". Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 46 out of 100 based on reviews from 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade moviegoers gave the film was a "B" on an A+ to F scale.

On the Australian television programme At the Movies, Margaret Pomeranz rated the film 3 stars and David Stratton rated the film 2 stars (out of 5). Indian film critic Nikhat Kazmi of the Times of India gave the film a positive review praising Atkinson's characteristic flair for comedy once again, giving it a 4 star rating out of 5.

Johnny English Reborn opened to an estimated $3,833,300 in its first weekend in United States and Canada. In the United Kingdom, it grossed $7,727,025, $2,628,344 in Australia, and $3,391,190 in Germany. After five weeks in release, it grossed $8,305,970 in the United States and Canada and $151,772,616 elsewhere, bringing to a total of $160,078,586.

Budget $45 million

Box office $160.1 million

My Review

Silly spies and comical cops are always a welcome treat to chase those blues away as far as my record goes, from the likes of Frank Drebin to Austin Powers , perhaps there is none other than Rowan Atkinson's Johnny English, a misfit of British Intelligence, that was much maligned when first unleashed into the world back in 2003. Atkinson is better known throughout the world as Mr Bean, his most successful creation to date, but his Johnny English didn't receive as much love, so a sequel to the film is somewhat surprising, yet anticipated because of Atkinson's prolonged absence from the big screen.

This of course gets explained in Johnny English Reborn, who had spent the last five years in a monastery after being dismissed for embarrassing MI7 in a mission failure at Mozambique, learning new skills such as mind over matter, training the weakest part of the body (his head actually, if you get the meaning), and strengthening parts of the body which got abused to slapstick perfection. And when all else fails, experience is something to put into good use to compensate for whatever's lacking when up against opponents. What you see in the trailer, forms the new, upgraded version of the British superspy, now recalled and reinstated, but not without his boss Pamela (Gillian Anderson) providing him with sidekick Agent Tucker (Daniel Kaluuya), and the usual host of wonderful spy toys.

As if to spoof the very obvious James Bond further which got reboot through Casino Royale, English begins his first mission at Casino Lisboa in Macau before jet setting back to Kowloon, Hong Kong, and back to Britain. And to add the feather in the cap, Rosamund Pike, who was a one time Bond Girl in Die Another Day, joins the cast as a typical Bond girl role as Kate Sumner the psycho-analyst, who reads body language for a living, recruited so as to assist in a diplomatic mission of helping the British Prime Minister react and respond to a one on one meeting with the Chinese premier, which a secret assassin organization known as Vortex is trying to disrupt.

Most of the time the story involves English and team running around trying to solve who the three key persons in Vortex are in an attempt to avoid a grave diplomatic row, so the scenarios painted contain plenty of slapstick laughs, and repetition at times when carrying on a joke for far too long, such as the cleaning lady gag. Toilet humour are part and parcel of its arsenal, although it goes to show how receptive audiences here can be whenever it involves a good dose of kicking the nuts (to rapturous applause I must add). It's an exercise of expectations and anticipation with spy movies like these, where every single gadget and skill introduced are a cocked Chekov's gun waiting to be unleashed at least once when the time is opportune, and always coincidentally, everything has its place in good time.

It's likely Rowan Atkinson's absence on the big and small screen contributed to the enthusiastic turn out as well as response to the gags he pulled, which is reminiscence of his abilities to perform facial gymnastics to pull a funny face, be it a twitch of the eye, or full blown rubbery effect. In some ways his Johnny English character has now aged like fine wine, being mellower yet no less bumbling in his tasks, being silly yet endearing, knowing that he'll pull out safely from any ordeal he finds himself in, from being chased by hordes of agents, to one on one fisticuffs. Daniel Kaluuya is also a wonderful addition in becoming the intelligence rudder for Team English, funny in his own right, although being a rookie character is hardly ever taken seriously, much less by his partner. Gillian Anderson doesn't do much with her M inspired role, while Dominic West had considerably greater screen time as the alpha spy and long time friend of English.

Should anyone be searching for a clear message or moral of the story, I'd say you're barking up the wrong tree. Surely there are elements of "brotherhood" and trust issues strewn around, but look no further than this film providing sheer entertainment while you're at it, since you're likely to forget what had exactly transpired or the jokes told in detail. If you haven't had enough of Atkinson and his Johnny English persona, then stay behind when the end credits roll for a short scene where he struts his stuff in the kitchen preparing a meal for two, synchronized to classical music. Welcome back, Rowan Atkinson! 8.7/10

{There are quite a few hilarious scenes in this film, but these are just a couple}