Master comedian at work

After the bummer that was “Horrible Bosses,” it was with pleasure and relief that we embraced the new “Johnny English” spy caper, with Rowan Atkinson of “Mr. Bean” fame spoofing James Bond. Atkinson is way too old to be believable as an action hero, but that’s part of the fun.

The new film’s back story has it that agent English was ignominiously dropped from the secret service after he bungled a key mission in Mozambique, which resulted in the death of the country’s chief of state. He then spent years in a Buddhist monastery for warrior-monks in a grim attempt to reclaim his self-worth—just in the nick of time, because the agency that rejected him is forced to hire him again to foil a new and even more dastardly plot to achieve world domination.

This time around, English’s top nemeses are three faceless master villains who are as brilliant as they are evil. In addition, he has to contend with the badgering antics of a little old Chinese grandmother who turns out to be a prodigiously versatile and peripatetic foe, popping up at the most inconvenient times to pester our antic hero to distraction.

To be sure, much of the territory that this James Bond spoof covers is too long in the tooth and the worse for wear to be freshly funny. But, Atkinson’s experience as a TV mime enables him to extract blood from a stone, so to speak, so the belly laughs (or at least giggles) keep coming as the flick piles one insane incongruity on top of another.

Running gags

A lot of comic mileage is derived from parodies of secret agent conventions and inventions, like miniaturized weapons and cars that can do everything except burp the baby. Then, there are “mistaken identity” running gags, including one that ends the movie with a comic bang and involves no less than the august queen of the realm herself!

Viewed more technically, however, the film takes too long a time getting its storytelling going, especially when it goes into too detailed a staging of its scenes in Asia, before the production breezily acquires a more “international” pedigree.

Still and all, “Johnny English” is soon able to get its act more dynamically together, and cheekily ends up being more diverting than American secret agent spoofs like “Get Smart.”

The British style of comedy is more suited to a James Bond spoof like this, because its “stiff-upper-lip” approach adds to the sardonic sense of fun that is endangered. Since Agent English is so full of himself, he presents a more vulnerable target for jokes, and viewers are delighted when he makes a fool of himself for all the world to snort and laugh at.

While presenting himself as a constantly moving target for viewers’ derision, however, Atkinson very smartly makes it a point to also underscore Johnny English’s more lovable and childlike side, so the laughs he gets are warm, rather than cruelly scathing. This master comedian sure knows what he’s doing!