Johnny English Strikes Again review: More than ever this half-arsed spy spoof feels lazily out of touch
Here’s why Mr Bean is funny and Johnny English is not.
The former character is comically inept, but morally pure. In the opening sequence, Mr. Bean literally descends to Earth in a beam of light, as though ejected from the Pantheon, or deposited by an intergalactic spaceship. A choir sings “ecce homo qui est faba”, which means “behold the man who is a bean”. He is not of our world. He is perhaps a rebellious god or an adolescent alien, placed on Earth to learn humility and honour among mankind.
As such, his naive incompetence can be forgiven. The audience roots for Mr Bean, whose comic struggles to fit in with those around him often, on some level, reflect our own. He is virtuous, and never malicious, except for that one episode where he violently removes a man’s trousers in a public bathroom.
Johnny English however, is a human spy to be judged on mortal terms. His failings are his own. Untrammelled arrogance and ineptitude are not endearing qualities to the viewer. Compare him to the superior Bond parody, Austin Powers, whose comically inflated ego is matched by his actual abilities as a secret agent. Both are send-ups of a ludicrous archetype, but Powers had to good grace to vanish when the subject of its parody was replaced with the grittier, Daniel Craig era Bond.
Johnny English Strikes Again isn’t punching up, down or anywhere for that matter, because the punching bag has long since been placed into storage. The slapstick doesn’t land, the jokes fall flat, and the repeated references to English being of another era – the line about electric cars sounding like nose trimmers belongs in a Jeremy Clarkson column from 2004 – only compound the notion that he really is a relic of a character who was never funny to begin with.
Rowan Atkinson’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to come away from this with his reputation intact.