Johnny English Strikes Again – Review

Director: David Kerr

Runtime: 88mins

I had a lot of dread as I was walking into Johnny English Strikes Again. As the third instalment in the Johnny English franchise, it already felt like an unnecessary sequel based on a premise that has since become incredibly dated. The novelty of a spy film has lost the qualities that Johnny English tries to satirise. The notion of spy pens, explosive gummi bears and blow darts haven’t been seen in ‘real’ spy films since the early ’90s. This made the humour in this film fall flat and made a lot of the characters and plot feel dated and unrelatable.

Johnny English Strikes Again begins with a cyber attack, revealing the identity of all active agents in Britain. Johnny English, who has since gotten a job as a teacher in a high-class boarding school, is forced to come out of retirement to find the mastermind hacker behind the cyber attack.

Rowan Atkinson is his usual ‘loveable idiot’ character who finds himself over his head in a modern spy world, with technology such as virtual reality, smart cars and advanced mobile phones. Johnny English takes on this mission, clearly happy to be back in the field after teaching his children all about camouflage and manhunts. His typical brand of humour is back as Johhny quickly finds himself in difficult situations. After he essentially immobilises the other retired agents, its all on Johnny and his sidekick Bough to solve the mystery.

Unfortunately, the plot itself was not that difficult to predict. After the introduction of Jason, a high tech billionaire with advanced tracking capabilities, it was clear that he was the hacker we were looking for. The film doesn’t spend long trying to hide this reveal, but it is long enough that the audience might feel a little stupid for watching.

Emma Thompson is wasted as an actress as the Prime Minister as she quickly becomes incredibly unlikable. Constantly just looking for results, she makes some of the biggest mistakes in the film (and that’s saying a lot considering English’s character). She has a few interactions with Jason that make her look idiotic and she is quick to sign over all of Britain’s security to this freelance billionaire without any hesitation.

Johnny is smart enough at the beginning of the film to refuse any technological gear, understanding that the terrorist they are searching for cannot have any opportunity to track him. However, the understanding of technology seems to be incredibly uneven as sometimes Johnny understands what’s at stake and then in the very next scene struggles to film a video on an iPhone. This became very frustrating as it didn’t seem clear what Johnny’s understanding was and the writers used this to create humorous situations that just didn’t land.

One of the scenes that got a genuine laugh out of me was when English was given VR gear to practice an infiltration into Jason’s manor. Naturally, English doesn’t use the technology correctly and begins walking through London (all the while thinking he was standing still) and begins beating up and attacking innocent bystanders in bookstores, coffee shops and double-decker buses. While this scene was quite amusing, the understanding of the technology was still frustrating. What are the odds that just as Johnny was walking up some virtual steps, some steps appeared for him to walk up? The worst part of this scene was when he ended up in the very room he started in, not realising what he had done. While not only is this highly unlikely, they could have used this reveal in a clever way and have him take off the goggles to view his own destructive path.

The spy gear that Johnny did request was clearly added narratively speaking to also cause more hi-jinks. The introduction of sleeping pills or hyper pills was clearly going to be misused later by English (and sure enough they were). The introduction of magnetic boots, candy trackers and even the beautiful Aston Martin, even at the beginning of the film, were clearly going to be misused by English in some hilarious fashion.

Johnny English Strikes Again was an unnecessary third instalment in an already average franchise. The humour was more appropriate and enjoyable for a younger audience which is clearly not their target demographic. However, if you enjoy Rowan Atkinson’s brand of comedy, you still may find yourself laughing at the right parts. The film itself is slapstick humour at its worst and failed to have an interesting storyline despite its traditional spy motifs.