journal features

movie review - Johnny English Strikes Again

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Kokubunji, 2021.02.17

This is a spy spoof in which Rowan Atkinson plays a dimwitted secret agent of mostly good nature. We watched this for "movie night" and the kids seemed to dig it. The humor is pedestrian, the writing is nowhere near as sharp as you might expect. As in the past movie in this attenuated series, all the active spies are dead or compromised, and it's up to our hero English to save the day. Given that this also features Emma Thompson and Ben Miller, you'd expect more charisma and tone but nah.

Recommended. For movie night with the kids and only if they're undemanding.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot