Thursday, September 27, 2018

Johnny English Strikes Again - A Hilarious Rowan Atkinson's Spy Comedy Movie

This movie had in been in my radar for weeks as I was looking forward to seeing Rowan Atkinson reprising his role in this spy comedy movie. Though I did not have any recollection of the plot from the earlier movies, but I still remember I had lots of fun watching them. So when it finally premiered in Indonesia yesterday (much earlier than in US), my wife and I bought the tickets for 6.45 PM show in the theater nearest to our home. OK let's get on with the movie now.

Brief Story Line

When the British secret service agency MI7 was having a cyber attack which exposed the identities of all the secret agents, they had no choice but to seek the help from the only living agent who had been in retirement, Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson - Mr. Bean TV series, Keeping Mum etc). Despite the reluctance from the Britain's Prime Minister (Emma Thompson - Beauty and the Beast, Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix etc), they had no choice but to let him lead this assignment.


With the help from his former assistant Bough (Ben Miller - Paddington 2, Death in Paradise TV series etc), Johnny English started his investigation which would lead them to a suspicious woman named Ophelia (Olga Kurylenko - Hold Your Breath, The November Man etc). Meanwhile Prime Minister was thinking of cooperation with US tech billionaire Jason Volta (Jake Lacy - Rampage, The Office TV series etc) on increasing the technology security. 

So could Johnny and Bough complete their mission with their low level technology equipment against the cyber attack and save England? Find them all in this hilarious spy comedy movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Well this movie was exactly what I had expected. It was full of funny moments from start to finish. It did not take a long time for us to meet with our beloved Rowan Atkinson who immediately made us laughed few minutes after his appearance. And what came next was the constant laughing out loud comedic situations resulted from Johnny English' own carelessness and silliness. And obviously his expressions which were mostly priceless. 

Now if you have seen his performance as Mr. Bean and loved them like my wife and I did, then you would surely be really satisfied watching him doing similar stuff. His cool & tough acting really contradict with his actual actions which were far from it. His interaction with his assistant Bough (who reprise his role from the first Johnny English movie from 2003) was nice to see, since a lot of the time Bough was the one who was able to bring Johnny out of trouble. All the audience were mostly laughing at lots of the scenes and very entertained.

Being a spy comedy movie which was sort of like parody of the James Bond series, this one had to be seen as a non-serious film. Of course you should not compare it with the actual serious spy movie and should just enjoy it as a movie for us to have good laughs. So you should not expect the perfect scenario and plot, as we could already guessed how the story would continue and there was no surprising twists for us (that was not supposed to be the intention anyway as this was not such movie). 

Aside from Rowan Atkinson and Ben Miller, we also could enjoy Emma Thompson in a less serious role as the Prime Minister and Olga Kurylenko playing the mysterious "love interest" like in any other spy movies. But because this was a comedy movie of PG13 rating, I did not find any disturbing or violent scenes. Movie also filled with some nice 80's songs such as I'm Your Man by Wham!, or Venus from Bananarama and few others. There were very few action scenes and some of the spy works they did were shown in comedic ways so movie can be enjoyed even at cinemas without superior sound system.

Overall it was an enjoyable experience seeing this spy comedy movie and I believed the audience were entertained. We could laugh throughout the movie and felt happy after seeing the film. My wife was also satisfied seeing Rowan Atkinson again in a comedy movie after few years of only watching his Mr. Bean series shown on TV. If you are fan of his works and longing to see Rowan Atkinson again (like my wife and I did), then this movie certainly would satisfy. But if you are looking for serious spy movie or an intelligent comedy movie with the best kind of scenarios, then I do not think you would be able to enjoy this one. The choice is yours.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating 4 out of 5 stars

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