JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN (2011)

MyRating: Y1/2

Director: Oliver Parker

Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Gillian Anderson, Rosamund Pike, Dominic West, Daniel Kaluuya, Pik-Sen Lim, Richard Schiff, Mark Ivanir

MPAA: Rated PG for mild action violence, rude humor, some language and brief sensuality

Rowan Atkinson is back with his another greater-than-life adventure as Johnny English in a James Bond spoof comedy, which will make you think again if you think that tough, smart, fast, good in fighting and great with women, are the perfect criteria that makes Bond a great secret agent, as Johnny English will proof to you that dumb, clumsy, slow, silly and ignorance are actually the key. So, you may have to forget about Daniel Craig.

After failing an important mission in Mozambique, Johnny English takes a retreat to China to do some introspection for his mistakes and learns martial arts to toughen himself. But when his country needs him for a new mission in order to stop a group of international assassins, named itself as 'Vortex', before they could kill the Chinese Prime Minister and cause worldwide chaos, Johnny English has to come back to his country and resume his role one more time as the MI7 Secret Agent. And he gets himself into another dangerous adventure, without fear of losing his life, in order to serve his country and to save the world. Why they choose him? Because he is the best secret agent available. So, forget about James Bond.

I like Rowan Atkinson and his popular TV Series Mr. Bean (1990-1995). We can say that Atkinson is a natural-born comedian (even though personally he is a quiet and very introvert person) and the character of Mr. Bean is already a legend that will be forever remembered as one of England's finest and iconic comedy. Even though I loved Mr. Bean TV series, as it was very funny and terrific, but the two Mr. Bean movies, Bean (1997) and Mr. Bean Vacation (2007), didn't really work for me. In my opinion, the movie versions were never successful in bringing the full hilarity of Mr. Bean to the big screen as the way I fell for the character in the TV series.

I never watch the first Johnny English (2003) movie, so I went to this sequel with an open mind with the expectation of getting a good comedy, as I might use some good laughs. But I regret to say that the movie hardly made me laugh, as the more the story goes, the more I felt boring and yawned. The comedy worked so slow and too indolent for me, as if I have to wait before I could smile, and before I could laugh, I realized that there was actually nothing really funny to be laughed about. Indeed, the movie were not funny with too many slapstick jokes and very predictable comedy. The dialogs didn't help either, which tried to be funny, but ended up not. And I blame all this to the weak script, the same I blamed the failures of all Mr. Bean's big screen movies to the bad screenplays.

If you are a fan of Mr. Bean and you happened to like this movie, then I know you may not be agreed with me. But this movie did work so wrong for me in every level and I have to honestly say that it was an unfunny disaster. It's a shame that Rowan Atkinson, who I think is a great comedian, never could really show his comedic greatness in the big screen due to, again and again, bad scripts. (MJ)

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