Johnny English (2003)

User Rating:

5.7/10   

Director:

Peter Howitt

Writers:

Neal Purvis (written by) &
Robert Wade (written by) ...

Release Date:

18 July 2003 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Comedy

Tagline:

Stor biograf-success! (Huge cinema-success!)

Plot:

Rowan plays the eponymous lead character in a spoof spy thriller. During the course of the story we...

Plot Keywords:

British | Spy | Crown Jewels | Funeral | British Secret Service

Awards:

4 nominations

Cast

Rowan Atkinson	...	Johnny English
Tasha de Vasconcelos	...	Countess Alexandra - Exotic Woman
Ben Miller	...	Bough, English's Sidekick
Greg Wise	...	Agent One
Douglas McFerran	...	Carlos Vendetta
Steve Nicolson	...	Dieter Klein
Terence Harvey	...	Official at Funeral
Kevin McNally	...	Prime Minister
Tim Pigott-Smith	...	Pegasus, Head of MI7
Nina Young	...	Pegasus' Secretary
Rowland Davies	...	Sir Anthony Chevenix
Natalie Imbruglia	...	Lorna Campbell
Philippa Fordham	...	Snobby Woman
John Malkovich	...	Pascal Sauvage, the Greedy Frenchman
Tim Berrington	...	Roger

Also Known As:

Johnny English (France)
Johnny English: Rogue Male (UK) (working title)
Touch of Weevil (UK) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated PG for comic nudity, some crude humor and language.

Runtime:

UK:88 min | USA:87 min

Country:

France | UK

Language:

English | French

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Iceland:L | Malaysia:U | Ireland:PG | Argentina:Atp | Australia:PG | Brazil:Livre | Canada:PG | Finland:K-7 | Germany:6 (bw) | Hong Kong:IIA | Netherlands:AL | New Zealand:M | Norway:11 | Philippines:PG-13 | Singapore:PG | South Korea:All | Spain:T | Sweden:7 | Switzerland:10 (canton of Zurich) | Switzerland:10 (canton of the Grisons) | Switzerland:7 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:7 (canton of Vaud) | UK:PG | USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Brocket Hall, Lemsford, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, UK

Company:

Working Title Films

Trivia:

The car that Johnny English uses is an Aston Martin DB7 Vantage

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: The tattoo bearing the words "JESUS IS COMING, LOOK BUSY" on the buttocks of the fake archbishop of Canterbury is clearly not real: the letter N in COMING is blurred because of the man's sweat.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Johnny English: Ah, the Heckler and Koch G-36. Quite deadly in the right hands.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Dhamaal (2007)

Soundtrack:

Theme from Johnny English

It's certainly not a great movie, but to say it's vastly superior to the Austin Powers series is to pay it too small a compliment.

It's not just that the jokes are funnier (there's one explicit poo joke, which is one too many, but still: it's just the one) or that Rowan Atkinson is a far better performer than Mike Myers, or anything comparatively trivial like that. No. The real difference is that "Johnny English" has its heart in the right place. Part of this difference is the fact that it has a heart at all.

English, unlike Powers, is not just a blank space in which the screenwriters can insert gags. He's a character. And there's more to the character than just clumsiness and pomposity. English is endearing because he's manifestly no fool. We know more than he knows, we see the banana skin immediately in front of his feet which he invariably fails to see, and in a way it's his fault he fails to see it himself, but his failure to see it is always something other than a failure of intelligence. He's easy enough to humiliate but, for some reason, hard to hoodwink. It's refreshing, too, that we're allowed to feel for him - when, for instance, he's dismissed from the case. We see Johnny English being devastated, not Rowan Atkinson trying to be funny.

Sure, it's not what it could have been. It's funny without being brilliantly so, and the satire (what there is of it) is on the blunt side. But these merely negative failings aren't enough to kill a film. Its biggest problem may be bad timing. When the script was being written, the anti-French sentiment must have seemed quaint and amusing, harmless because unreal; nobody could have predicted, surely, the sickening wave of hatred (the fact that it was all planned by the likes of Rupert Murdoch does not, alas, make the hatred any less real) that was shortly to sweep over the English-speaking world. Any joke about the French now has a sour taste at best.