First Take: Johnny English Strikes Again- it’s all literally falling apart

SYNOPSIS:

After a cyber-attack reveals the identity of all of the active undercover agents in Britain, Johnny English is forced to come out of retirement to find the mastermind hacker.

A third Johnny English film is something not many people were asking for when it was announced last year, especially after the Kingsman films did this sort of thing pretty successfully in between the release of Reborn and this one, and unsurprisingly, it fails to deliver on the same comedic stylings that made the first one a cult classic back in 2001.

Another new director is in charge, this time it’s David Kerr helming the film, and this feels like a radical change in genre from his work on BBC series Inside No. 9, as he works to a pretty dire script from William Davies that is just setpiece, after setpiece, after setpiece- younger audiences will have no issue, especially with some of the humour in there, but it didn’t earn enough laughter to pass the 6 laugh test, something which over 1 hour 28 minutes- the ideal length for a comedy- just doesn’t work. It’s shot well by Florian Hoffmeister, and the score from TV composing legend Howard Goodall just about does the job.

Arguably saving the film from receiving the full What The Hell Happened treatment is the inimitable Rowan Atkinson, and even in his advanced age, he is still able to pull off the physical comedy he has become so well known for over his nearly 40 year career, and returning from the first film is Ben Miller- so the double act is back. Joining them is Emma Thompson, Olga Kurylenko, Jake Lacy, Michael Gambon, Charles Dance and many others, while the performances aren’t the greatest in the world, the film will have a good run- it just depends on how audiences feel as we approach that almighty October half term holiday.

THE VERDICT

Families will enjoy this film. Film critics won’t. Arguably the weakest of the Johnny English saga, I have to say, why even bother making another one- because it’s difficult to create something original and unique with espionage comedies.

RATING- 3/5