Johnny English Strikes Again

Johnny English is virtually real.

(2018) Spy Comedy (Focus)  Rowan Atkinson, Olga Kurylenko, Ben Miller, Emma Thompson, Jake Lacy, Adam James, David Mumeni, Miranda Hennessy, Samantha Russell, Michael Gambon, Edward Fox, Charles Dance, Roger Barclay, Amit Shah, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Matthew Beard, Jack Fox, Noah Spiers, Alfie Kennedy, Jasmine Brightmore, Adam Greaves-Neal, Kendra Mei.  Directed by David Kerr

I don’t have a problem with silly movies. I’m all for silliness, and few actors do silly as well as Rowan Atkinson. But did anybody think this character, created for a series of British bank adverts, would last three films?

The suave superspy Johnny English (Atkinson) is happily retired as an instructor at a snooty boarding school, teaching his charges spycraft and military techniques when he is summoned back into service. It seems that a hacker has “outed” all of Britain’s spies, and is playing havoc with the traffic signals and banking system. The testy Prime Minister (Thompson) is getting ready to host the G-12 summit and she doesn’t want Great Britain humiliated. English, an analogue man in a digital world, seems to be the perfect choice to crack the case.

With the aid of a beautiful Russian spy (former Bond girl Kurylenko) and a trusty sidekick (Miller), English chases after Silicon Valley tycoon Jason Volta (Lacy) in a vintage Aston-Martin but does he still have the stuff to save England once again?

If you liked Johnny English and Johnny English Reborn you will probably like this as well – it’s more in the same vein, although the fart jokes of the latter have given way to Atkinson dropping his drawers with dreary repetition. I suppose that’s a step up.

Atkinson remains a gifted physical comedian but the character doesn’t differ much from faux spies we’ve seen in other spoofs. He has Clouseau-like misplaced arrogance, Maxwell Smart-like dignity and Austin Powers-like indominable resilience. There are tons of Bond references here but let’s face it, Bond did his own self-parody years ago and much better than this franchise.

Fans of Rowan Atkinson will dig this but probably not many else and even they may grouse that he was much better in Blackadder which he was. Then again, the writing in that series was so much better than the lowbrow tripe we get here. Perhaps this would have been better titled Johnny English Wears Out His Welcome.

REASONS TO SEE: Rowan Atkinson is unconsciously funny.
REASONS TO AVOID: Too been-there done-that for my taste.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some comic violence and rude humor, brief nudity and profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Thompson’s husband Greg Wise has a small role as Agent One.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, HBO Now, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/3/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 37% positive reviews: Metacritic: 39/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Lone Star Deception

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New Releases for the Week of October 26, 2018

MID90S

(A24) Sunny Suljic, Katherine Waterston, Lucas Hedges, Na-kel Smith, Olan Prenatt, Gio Galicia, Ryder McLaughlin, Alexa Demie, Fig Camila Abner. Directed by Jonah Hill

Stevie, a 13-year-old boy living in Southern California in the 1990s, develops a deep friendship with a group of skaters at the local skate shop. They help take his mind off of his troubled home life and teach him life lessons that will serve him well in the next Millennium. Not only is this actor Jonah Hill’s directing debut it is getting some legitimate Oscar buzz off of the film’s Toronto Film Festival appearance just last month.

See the trailer, an interview and a video featurette here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for pervasive language, sexual content, drug and alcohol use, some violent behavior/disturbing images – all involving minors)

The Guilty

(Magnolia) Jakob Cedergren, Jessica Dinnage, Omar Shargawi, Johan Olsen. A Copenhagen police officer is put on desk duty at the local emergency call center after an incident in the field. On his last day before he is expected to be cleared for his actions, a call comes in from a terrified woman who has been kidnapped. As the drama unfolds we see this entirely from the point of view of the operator who it turns out has secrets of his own. This was my favorite movie from this year’s Florida Film Festival and if you missed it then, you owe it to yourself to see it now. Not convinced? Follow the link below to my review

See the trailer and a clip here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Suspense
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: R (for language)

Hunter Killer

(Summit) Gerard Butler, Gary Oldman, Common, Linda Cardellini. An American captain is tasked with the mission of rescuing a kidnapped Russian president from a rogue General and in doing so averting World War III.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, video featurettes and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for violence and some language)

Indivisible

(Pure Flix) Justin Bruening, Sarah Drew, Jason George, Tia Mowry-Hardrict. An Army Chaplin serving in Iraq and his wife keeping the home fires burning at home face tribulations and heartache while separated. Neither dreamed that reuniting would be even more of an obstacle as they both wonder if they have the strength left to save their marriage.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Faith-Based Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some thematic material and war violence)

Johnny English Strikes Again

(Focus) Rowan Atkinson, Olga Kurylenko, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon. Britain’s greatest spy is called out of retirement when all of the current secret agents are outed by a cyber-spy. To find the mastermind behind the disaster, English must utilize all his experience and skills which is harder than it sounds being as he’s an analogue man in a digital world.

See the trailer and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Spy Comedy
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Cinemark Universal Citywalk, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG (for some action violence, rude humor, language and brief nudity)

London Fields

(Paladin/Atlas) Billy Bob Thornton, Amber Heard, Theo James, Jim Sturgess. A terminally ill American writer in London searches for one last story to tell and finds one in Nicola Six, who knows when and how she will be murdered but not who – only that one of them is a man she’s having a relationship with. Based on a Martin Amis novel, this has already been reviewed by Cinema365. Follow the link to the review below

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Mystery
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, Cinemark Universal Citywalk, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Pointe Orlando
Rating: R (for language including sexual references and brief nudity)

Silencio

(Tulip) John Noble, Rupert Graves, Melina Matthews, Michel Chauvet. In order to save her son’s life, a woman must find a stone with incredible powers in a remote and dangerous part of Mexico. However, there are others after the stone – who would be willing to kill to acquire it.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Adventure
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Cobb Plaza Cinema Café, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village, Satellite Ocean Walk
Rating: R (for some violence)

Street Voices

(Duende) El Alfa, Melymel, Vicente Suriel, Shellow Shaq. A trio of talented but poor street kids who love rap decide to pool their talents to realize their musical dreams. Those dreams could come at a high price however.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Urban Musical
Now Playing: Regal The Loop, Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: PG-13 (for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some drug references and violence)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Don’t Go
First Love
Kaashamora
Namaste England
Trabajo Sucio
Veera Bhoga Vasantha Rayalu

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

Beautiful Boy
El Pacto
First Love
Glass Jaw
The Happy Prince
Havana Habibi
I Am Not a Witch
Kayamkulam Kochunni
Parkland Inside Building 12
Suspiria (2018)
Trabajo Sucio
Veera Bhoga Vasantha Rayalu

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

Air Strike
The School
Trabajo Sucio
Veera Bhoga Vasantha Rayalu

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

The Perfect Wave

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Don’t Go
The Guilty
Hunter Killer
London Fields
Mid90s

Johnny English Reborn

Rowan Atkinson gives himself a little touch-up.

(2011) Spy Spoof (Universal) Rowan Atkinson, Gillian Anderson, Dominic West, Rosamund Pike, Daniel Kaluuya, Tim McInernny, Pik-Sen Lim, Richard Schiff, Burn Gorman, Isla Blair, Mark Ivanir, Stephen Campbell Moore, Roger Barclay, Eric Carte. Directed by Oliver Parker

The world needs its superspies. Suave men ridiculously well-dressed who can toss a grenade with one hand while holding a perfectly made cocktail in the other while spouting a witticism as dry as his martini. We need them. Really we do.

That is to say, we need Johnny English (Atkinson) but the urbane spy no longer needs the world. After a disaster in Mozambique which led to a world leader getting assassinated on Johnny’s watch, he has retired to a kung fu monastery where he is undergoing rigorous training to get a Zen-like calm back although what getting kicked in the nuts has to do with Zen I’m not quite sure.

Then he gets word that he is needed at MI-7 (now known as Toshiba British Intelligence in one of the film’s better jokes) and reports to Pegasus (Anderson), the agency’s chief. It appears that another assassination is in the offing and the contact who knows anything about it will speak only to English. Johnny is given a hero-worshipping Agent Tucker (Kaluuya) to assist and is watched like a hawk by psychiatrist, Kate Sumner (Pike) whom he develops a more intimate rapport with.

In the meantime he must contend with supercilious agent Simon Ambrose (West), an octogenarian hit woman with a deadly vacuum cleaner (Lim) and a clever and deadly opponent who always seems to be at least one step (if not more) ahead of English and his colleagues. Plus, it seems, there may be a mole within the agency. Someone evidently forgot to call the exterminator.

I have to admit first off that Rowan Atkinson is a taste I haven’t yet acquired. He has legions of fans for his efforts in “Blackadder,” “Mr. Bean” and in dozens of film appearances over the years but I haven’t ever really found him to be my taste, so take anything negative I say about him with a grain of salt. He is a gifted physical comedian but for whatever reason I’ve always found him to be too lowbrow. He is the equivalent of a fart joke and there are plenty enough of those here.

There are a lot of Bond references here as there must be in any self-respecting spy spoof but at times you get the sense that there isn’t any sort of real imagination here particularly in regards to the story. It seems like something we’ve seen a million times before, not only in Bond but it traditional suspense movies and in other spoofs, like “Get Smart” for example.

This is definitely aimed at youngsters. The humor really is on that level. Parents will get the references; kids will love the toilet humor and pratfalls. It’s really quite inoffensive and has moments that you might chuckle nostalgically at but it got little more out of me. Those who love Atkinson will probably get a lot more out of it than I did. It’s not a bad movie – heaven knows there’s much worse out there – but by the same token it isn’t going to remain in your memory banks for very long.

WHY RENT THIS: Some nifty gadgets and Atkinson, though an acquired taste, never disappoints.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The humor is terribly juvenile and the plot stale and predictable.

FAMILY VALUES:  There’s a little bit of rude humor, some cartoonish violence, a few choice bad words and some sexiness.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Simon Ambrose is said to have attended Eton College. In reality Dominic West, the actor that portrays him, actually did attend Eton.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $160.1M on a $45M production budget; this was a big hit but nearly all of it overseas. Only $8M came from domestic box office which virtually guarantees we’ll see another Johnny English movie but possibly not over here.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

FINAL RATING: 4/10

NEXT: Mystery, Alaska

New Releases for the Week of October 21, 2011

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

(Summit) Logan Lerman, Milla Jovovich, Matthew Macfadyen, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Mads Mikkelsen, Gabriella Wilde, Juno Temple, Orlando Bloom, Christoph Waltz. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

A hot-headed young man joins forces with three rogue Musketeers to take on the evil Cardinal Richelieu, the sensual assassin Milady DeWinter and Lord Buckingham, prime minister of their sworn enemies Great Britain and prevent a cataclysmic war. There have been screen versions of this Alexandre Dumas classic for decades (my favorite being the Alexander and Ilya Salkind version in the 70s) but this is the first to come out in 3D.

See the trailer, clips and featurettes here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D

Genre: Adventure

Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of adventure action violence)

Johnny English Reborn

(Universal) Rowan Atkinson, Gillian Anderson, Dominic West, Rosamund Pike. There is a plot afoot to assassinate a world leader and cause global chaos and only one man can stop it – superspy Johnny English. The trouble is that English is nowhere to be found, and once he finally is located, is woefully out of practice. That’s no matter; what Johnny English does requires no skill or practice whatsoever.

See the trailer and promos here.

For more on the movie this is the website

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Spy Spoof

Rating: PG (for mild action violence, rude humor, some language and brief sensuality)

Margin Call

(Roadside Attractions) Zachary Quinto, Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany. On a single day during the height of the 2008 financial meltdown, the key players at a financial firm cope with the implications of a scandal at their own company that might shutter its doors forever. They will need to wrestle with decisions both moral and ethical that will not only weigh their jobs in the balance but also their very souls.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: R (for language)

The Mighty Macs

(Freestyle Releasing) Carla Gugino, David Boreanaz, Marley Shelton, Ellen Burstyn. In 1971, a small Catholic women’s college caught the imagination of the sports world when a hard-edged head coach and a spunky nun helped mold the team into a national championship run that defied the odds. They would become a team for the ages.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: True Sports Drama

Rating: G

Paranormal Activity 3

(Paramount) Katie Featherston, Sprague Grayden, Lauren Bittner, Chloe Csengery. This is the prequel to the enormously popular found footage horror series. It depicts, in the 80s, how the supernatural forces that beset Katie and Kristi came into their lives as young girls.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Supernatural Horror

Rating: R (for some violence, language, brief sexuality and drug use)

The Way

(ARC Entertainment) Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Deborah Kara Unger, Yorick van Wangingen. An American doctor travels to the Pyrenees to recover the remains of his estranged son, killed in a storm while making a pilgrimage along the Way of St. James. In tribute to his son and also as a means to understand him better, he decides to complete the journey his son wanted to make. This was directed by Estevez and filmed along the actual Camino de Santiago in France and Spain.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Spiritual Drama

Rating: NR