I remember going to see this James Bond spoof, starring the very talented Rowan Atkinson, on the silver screen back in 2003, and thinking it was a great comedy! I saw the movie again a couple times on the small screen within the next year or two after that, and my opinion did not change, even though it had been widely criticized by many. However, a little over four years ago, I watched it one more time, and still found some funny parts during this viewing, but found most of the film to be dull and unfunny, enough to make it just mediocre as a whole! For the first time, I could finally understand the criticism! I didn't watch "Johnny English" again until this month, knowing that a sequel is coming up, and it improved slightly for me this time, but not very much.
Johnny English is a secret agent in England who works for MI7, and has the tendency to louse up. After a bomb goes off and kills most of MI7's top agents, English is the only one left, so he is sent to the Tower of London to protect the crown jewels. While he is there, the crown jewels are stolen while the lights are out! It is unknown who stole them, but it is up to Johnny English to find the culprit! He investigates with his sidekick, Bough, and makes lots of mistakes, but eventually, he discovers that Pascal Sauvage, a Frenchman, has evil plans to become King of England, and take control of the nation! English must now try and reveal Sauvage's intentions to his country before it's too late. Bough and an initially mysterious woman he keeps running into and is in love with named Lorna Campbell can help him on this mission, but the mission will be made more challenging due to the agent's clumsiness!
During my most recent viewing, I found myself laughing pretty hard a number of times for a while, with a lot of the mistakes Johnny English makes and the accidents he causes. If it had stayed this way, I would have wondered what I found so lame about the spy spoof when I saw it in 2007, but unfortunately, it doesn't stay like that. I eventually found myself laughing less often and not as hard. Perhaps the constant sight gags and the protagonist lousing up just about everything he does just get a little tiring. Several times in the film, something goes wrong with the clumsy MI7 agent's gun when he points it at his enemies, and I found this funny at first, but it soon wore out its welcome to me. A lot of the slapstick just shows lazy and cheap comedy writing. When I saw the part where English climbs up through the toilet and gets covered in excrement again after a few years, I found it to be basically just like I did back in 2007 – not funny, just gross, though I still found Lorna's reaction pretty funny. However, towards the end, I did find some more big laughs, with a very memorable part I remember finding hilarious the first time, and not much less funny, if at all, the last time!
When I saw this spoof in 2003 and 2004, I hadn't seen nearly as much of Rowan Atkinson's work as I had by the time I watched it again in 2007. Maybe this was a major reason why I didn't find "Johnny English" nearly as good that time, and another major reason may have been that I had higher standards by that point. Atkinson still does show his talent in this film, and fans of his could easily find laughs here, but could also find that these laughs are nowhere near consistent enough to satisfy. The comedian playing a clumsy secret agent sounds like a great idea, but it did not reach its full potential, and I really get the feeling that this won't change with the upcoming sequel, "Johnny English Reborn", especially after seeing the trailer for it, featuring more excessively simplistic sight gags. I certainly don't think this 2003 spy spoof is as bad as many others do (it's still better than the super forgettable "Spy Hard"), but it's still pretty much just fluff, and far from one of the big highlights of Atkinson's career.
Johnny English is a secret agent in England who works for MI7, and has the tendency to louse up. After a bomb goes off and kills most of MI7's top agents, English is the only one left, so he is sent to the Tower of London to protect the crown jewels. While he is there, the crown jewels are stolen while the lights are out! It is unknown who stole them, but it is up to Johnny English to find the culprit! He investigates with his sidekick, Bough, and makes lots of mistakes, but eventually, he discovers that Pascal Sauvage, a Frenchman, has evil plans to become King of England, and take control of the nation! English must now try and reveal Sauvage's intentions to his country before it's too late. Bough and an initially mysterious woman he keeps running into and is in love with named Lorna Campbell can help him on this mission, but the mission will be made more challenging due to the agent's clumsiness!
During my most recent viewing, I found myself laughing pretty hard a number of times for a while, with a lot of the mistakes Johnny English makes and the accidents he causes. If it had stayed this way, I would have wondered what I found so lame about the spy spoof when I saw it in 2007, but unfortunately, it doesn't stay like that. I eventually found myself laughing less often and not as hard. Perhaps the constant sight gags and the protagonist lousing up just about everything he does just get a little tiring. Several times in the film, something goes wrong with the clumsy MI7 agent's gun when he points it at his enemies, and I found this funny at first, but it soon wore out its welcome to me. A lot of the slapstick just shows lazy and cheap comedy writing. When I saw the part where English climbs up through the toilet and gets covered in excrement again after a few years, I found it to be basically just like I did back in 2007 – not funny, just gross, though I still found Lorna's reaction pretty funny. However, towards the end, I did find some more big laughs, with a very memorable part I remember finding hilarious the first time, and not much less funny, if at all, the last time!
When I saw this spoof in 2003 and 2004, I hadn't seen nearly as much of Rowan Atkinson's work as I had by the time I watched it again in 2007. Maybe this was a major reason why I didn't find "Johnny English" nearly as good that time, and another major reason may have been that I had higher standards by that point. Atkinson still does show his talent in this film, and fans of his could easily find laughs here, but could also find that these laughs are nowhere near consistent enough to satisfy. The comedian playing a clumsy secret agent sounds like a great idea, but it did not reach its full potential, and I really get the feeling that this won't change with the upcoming sequel, "Johnny English Reborn", especially after seeing the trailer for it, featuring more excessively simplistic sight gags. I certainly don't think this 2003 spy spoof is as bad as many others do (it's still better than the super forgettable "Spy Hard"), but it's still pretty much just fluff, and far from one of the big highlights of Atkinson's career.