fine whine

Atkinson, Rowan Atkinson. He's well-known as the star of both Mr. Bean and Black Adder, but lesser known as British secret agent English, Johnny English. The DVD's back cover claims it to be a spy spoof, but I'd call it more of a spy farce. The last quote-unquote spoof I watched was the brutally unwatchable 2001: a space travesty, which is truly a horrible movie. For them to mention travesty in the title is by far an understatement (two thousand and one: / a space travesty so bad / you'll gouge out your eyes). Anymore Leslie Nielsen's name on anything anywhere near a comedy should be a red flag to run away, fast. I know this full well and yet have subjected myself to the likes of Men with brooms, Spy hard, Camouflage and now this, but I fear, that I may someday need to check out Dracula: dead and loving it to see what a real master of comedy and spoofs can do with the white-haired buffoon. The knowledge that he appears in Scary movie 3 in no way sways my desire to see that movie, however.

Anyway, I've got other foolishness to discuss. Case in point is the aforementioned Johnny English. Sticking to playing it relatively straight instead of pandering to laff-a-minute buffoonery, the movie ends up pretty decent. They did manage to shoehorn in some Beanish shenanigans, and only so with the most flimsy of pretense, but the movie's no Citizen Kane and they breezily keep the pace going well enough to smooth over most missteps. I do think that Rowan's a really funny guy, and this sort of material only shows all of the weapons he has in his comedic arsenal. Natalie Imbruglia's passable, and Malkovich is at his fake-accent best. With a little restraint, he wouldn't stand out too much in a real Bond flick, though he'd likely never accept a role in that franchise.

Thinking about the 007 formula and my appreciation for subjective films (i.e. those in which the audience sees only what the protagonist could), I had to wonder if the two could ever work together. The answer, I suspect, is no. Bond movies have at their foundation the need to show what the nefarious villain is secretly doing. To show only what 007 is doing and to ignore Blofeld, Goldfinger and so on just doesn't seem like it would work. Johnny English too shows both sides of the good/evil divide, though balanced well enough (once a few scenes with an alternate Atkinson role were excised, rightly so) and in note-perfect fashion.

Speaking of note-perfect, the composer and 'Bond' quartet were brilliant, weaving into their original music snippets (and maybe just recognizable intervals) from just about every theme 007's ever had. The movie wraps up with a rather unexpected conclusion (well, the means, not the end) and overall is rather quite decent.