My Review of "Johnny English Strikes Again"

Johnny English Strikes Again is an attempt to bring back the bumbling spy genre back. I've seen a lot of these over the years but this one has a different Rowan Atkinson spin on it. You'll see a few of the Mr. Bean mannerisms that sneak in here and there. I wouldn't say it was an absolutely great movie but it wasn't totally terrible either.

This movie starts off with Johnny English teaching kids the art of espionage in a classroom. This has an endearing quality to it and I really think they could make a whole movie on this. It was fun and would be a great concept for a movie. I would want to see a spy version of School of Rock.

Unfortunately the movie continues to let us know that there's been a cyber-attack on the British government network. All of their top spies have been outed and I guess killed or something. Britain has no other alternative but to recall all their retired spies. Johnny English is one of the spies that they have to recruit.

I like the fact that Johnny English requests for everything to be analogue rather than digital. He want to go "old school" to thwart any hackers from compromising his mission. It makes sense and amusing. Johnny is very much an old school guy that lives in the past. Some of his conversations had me chuckle a little.

Still this is a Rowan Atkinson rendition of a spy so you should expect a lot of physical comedy. He adds a ton of physical comedy to this movie. I would say that some of the comedy is like a family friendly version of 2016's Brothers Grimsby with Sacha Baron Cohen. It kind of makes me want to rewatch the movie 1997's The Spy That Knew Too Little with Bill Murray and all of the Pink Panther movies.

I didn't think they did enough play on how people think that Johnny's a great spy with all of ineptitude. They do a little of that but they focus on his incompetency. Everyone is aware of it but it doesn't really focus on this either like they did with 2010's MacGruber with Will Forte. I think it might have been a little bit better if they focused on how people were supposed to perceive Johnny so that the writers could choose more consistent reactions to Johnny's actions.

This movie had a great concept. A movie about a retired spy coming back to save the world in this day in age is a really fun idea. They had some interesting jokes sprinkled throughout the movie but I never really had any huge laugh out loud moments that made me forever remember the movie though.

I don't want to discourage them from making these types of movies though. It's a really fun genre that I really love watching but I think that they have to be a little more clever with the scenarios that they get themselves into. The jokes kind of felt like an older person making jokes of modern living with cell phones and electric cars. It's odd because Johnny requests old tech like some sort of exo-skeleton suit to help him on his mission. It isn't really consistent with his old school approach.

Overall, this isn't an entirely horrible movie. There are some good concepts and some funny moments but there are too few of them to make me really recommend this title to everyone. I have to give this movie a 5 out of 10. I will probably forget about this movie in a short time. That's too bad because I really wanted to like this movie more than I did.