The new adventure begins when a cyberattack reveals the identities of all active undercover agents in Britain, leaving Johnny English as the secret service's last hope. Called out of retirement, English dives headfirst into action with the mission to find the mastermind hacker. As a man with few skills and analogue methods, Johnny English must overcome the challenges of modern technology to make this mission a success.
I must start off by saying how great it is to see Rowan Atkinson back on our screens, as a legend of the film industry, these slapstick comedies seem to always find a way of getting him involved. Johnny English is no different, however it leads right from where the first film left off and I must say the first film definitely raised the bar for the series. Nonetheless, nearly 16 years after the first film was released, Rowan is still going strong! But the main question is, can the same be said for the film? Has that lasted the test of time? Or has it fallen short? Here are my thoughts.
Obviously this film is a comedy, and what this film does best luckily, is to entertain and make the audience laugh. The types of jokes are exactly the silly, slapstick jokes and stunts that we've come to expect from Johnny, but what this film did really nicely was incorporate these jokes into a new fashion by modernising and updating both the characters, the jokes and stunts that he performs. Simply elements such as the VR, the electric car and even smartphones are all just small elements in the film that help to bring it up to date, but similarly the film was made exciting by using a variety of both new and old school tools and gadgets. Many of which were really funny and entertaining, especially when they were accidentally fired or let off! I also really enjoyed how the film began, it was really concise, to the point and very prompt which I liked because it was all wrapped up in a very simple manner to introduce us to Johnny very nicely and keep us updated with how his character was living. The film also really introduced him and the other key characters within the film well, strangely enough there wasn't a real introduction for any of the characters, but we as an audience, felt a real attraction and warmth whenever the group came onto the screen and had the effect of making the characters seem really personal to us. I think this was a really nice effect because it just portrayed them all in a positive light and really helped to make them engaging and relatable to real world people and celebrities.
I found it to be really interesting how the plot of the film incorporated Johnny English, we were introduced to him as a school teacher in a private school, not exactly the 'zero to hero' that we expect from comedy films. But I think that this added in a fresh new perspective into the film, even though it lost its sense of urgency, it greatly improved the character and again, helped to make him more personal to us. But he still had the 'something to prove' attitude which really helped to drive the film forward and keep it exciting and then through this use of character development, it really helped the ending to have a satisfying close to the film. There was a really clear introduction to the plot and as the film developed, it was easy to keep up with as well, I particularly enjoyed the camera switches from country to country to show us how the different teams of characters were doing, it really helped to keep us as an audience up to date and actively involved with the film. Because we got a great perspective of what was going on for the different characters in the film. The straightforward and typical comical slap stick humour was definitely evident here and even though it's washed out a little, the film still definitely produced a good level of humour for all, admittedly some of the jokes weren't funny but most of them were and that's exactly what makes these films interesting and can make or break them. The point of a comedy is to entertain and make the audience laugh and it definitely followed those two rules here! Another element of this film that was typical was the silly secret agent character, that was apparent here but it was enjoyable to see him try to prove himself as a clever and courageous character and seeing him prove that he was neither of those was both hilarious and somewhat embarrassing! However it was 'old but gold' in the way that it was presented, timeless humour. On a different note, I found the vast array of different gadgets to be really cool and interesting, they were typical for a spy film but I just enjoyed seeing how everything worked and the variety of silly and interesting models that if you pull the pin off, then the jelly babies explode. It was silly but it just added in a new perspective into the film which the audience enjoyed. Speaking of audience engagement, it was awesome in this film! The way it achieved this was through foreboding, we could easily tell everything that would happen, for example the conversation about having low fuel in the Aston Martin and then the inevitable happening, but these types of scenes helped to make it straightforward and enjoyable for the audience because we really felt like we had an active role in the plot and as if we really knew what was going on. It was surprising to feel tense during this film too, but during numerous chase and fight scenes, there was an element of tension - mainly due to the slow and low pitched audio but these types of emotions and scenes just helped to add a new perspective and flavour into the film which was appreciated and somewhat successful! They were obviously very comical and slapstick but they were still enjoyable to experience and that's what counts. Another way in which the film engaged with the audience well was through getting the audience behind the characters, it managed to do this by making us feel emotional and upset for Johnny when he is ruthlessly fired from his role and the sad music helped to get us behind Johnny' backup plan - which felt really satisfying when he was successful in the end. Thankfully in this sense the plot was simple, straightforward and easy to understand, there were barely any issues or creases in the plot here, the film benefited from having such a simple plot, but it was by no means boring. The film included laughter, tension and sadness and the variety of comical stunts and cinematic scenes really made for an exciting watch. And at the end of the film, when the 'zero to hero' was complete, it felt satisfying, it really did and the film really used the great characters to have this gripping effect on us.
The problem is that comedy's are all very subjective, what someone will find funny, others won't - which is why comedies never recieve good ratings. However, here it is just more than the comedy aspect as to why it doesn't score highly, the humour was funny yes, but most of it felt re-used and recycled which definitely distracted from these key jokes, because the stunts and jokes had mainly been told and done before, so these just weren't as funny as they should've been. It just seemed to ruin the freshness of the film in this aspect. I also think that the film's writers must've expected all of the people who watched the film to be very naive. I understand that it's a comedy, but many of the elements of the film were a difficult pill to swallow, where completely outrageous and unrealistic things would happen which slightly distracted us from the humour element of the film. This was because we were focusing on how Johnny survived a fall, or how he managed to beat up a group of men etc instead of focusing on what was going on.
I wasn't impressed with some of the film's scenes either, it felt as if some of them were irrelevant and not needed at all which made the film seem a little unprofessional to be honest because I felt myself switching off during some scenes as they just didn't add anything to the film or entertain us at all. Many of the scenes were like this, where they rolled on without any context or explanation as to why they were there or the impact that they had. The characters were also a little confusing at the end, where characters became clear villains and then seemed to swap their stories and plans for world domination around a lot from one plan to another. This slightly hindered the overall structure of the film because it just felt like these final scenes weren't really explained properly so when it came to it, there was an element of confusion as to why that happened and the effect it had. It was all very confusing.
Overall, I would give this film a 7. It was funny and entertaining which is all a comedy film is expected to be really, it really feels as if there is no one better than Rowan Atkinson for this role and he fitted it perfectly. But there are far too many negative issues such as the structure of the film, the irrelevance of some scenes and the recycled humour which hindered the success of the overall film; it definitely didn't feel overly professional but like I've said, a comedy film must entertain and make the audience laugh and this film does both of those so it can't be penalised too harshly. If you're a big Johnny English or slapstick fan then you should definitely go watch this film, because it will definitely keep you entertained for an hour and a half, but if you're expecting to be thrilled, then please go watch another film!!
Thanks for reading my review, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing this review. Have a lovely day! :)
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