Review - Comedian Rowan Atkinson has been spending most of his screen time lately as a highly regarded Inspector Maigret for British television - a straight and still role rather than the mugging and gurning that made him famous.
He's been - as comedians so often are when they go straight - rather good.
At 62, you would think that Atkinson has nothing left to prove as a comedian having brought indelible characters like Blackadder and Mr Bean to life so effectively, and that the world of drama should be the next mountain to climb, but instead he's decided to risk that great reputation by going back to Johnny English with a pretty lethargic performance in a very tired franchise.
I can't call it a disappointment because I never thought Johnny English was much of a character to begin with, but I am surprised that in times of such turmoil in British public life that the story would fail to connect itself in any meaningful way with any of it.
Perhaps the main purpose of Johnny English Strikes Again is to provide funding for another entry in Mr Atkinson's sports car collection. In fact, the vintage Aston Martin that English drives in the film was bought by the actor specifically for the film, so maybe it is that simple.
Photo: Supplied
As our film begins, every single one of MI7's agents around the world have been compromised.
Prime Minister Emma Thompson - the only performer here who seems to be really trying but with nothing much except our familiarity with Theresa May to work with - has to bring the old guard out of retirement.
That includes Mr English, who is teaching basic spy skills to 11-year-olds at a prep school in the country.
Pressed back into service, he wisely - perhaps too wisely for a character intended to be so inept - calls for backup in the form of eager boffin Bough (played by Ben Miller) and the aforementioned Aston Martin - a rather ugly to my eyes 1980s V8 which is similar to the car Timothy Dalton drove in The Living Daylights. It was ugly then, too.
But it is not computerised, which means it can't be hacked by the cyber-villain who is attempting to take over the world.
Photo: Supplied
In a staggering coincidence, at the same time as cyber-attacks are crippling Britain's infrastructure, Prime Minister Thompson receives some overtures from a young dotcom tycoon, played by Jake Lacy.
He offers to fix all their problems as long as she signs over all Britain's data to his version of the Googleplex. And nobody suspects that he might be involved. It's a rare Johnny English film when he appears to be the smartest person in it.
A quick trip to the South of France is required to investigate a mysterious super yacht, the Dot Calm, which was in the vicinity of the IP address that started all the hacking. But who could own it? Gracious, what a puzzle.
English and Bough go undercover in a posh restaurant which they manage to set fire to, then sneak aboard the Dot Calm with some magnetic boots that provide one of the few opportunities to laugh out loud.
On board the Dot Calm is a beautiful and enigmatic Russian named Ophelia, played as a weak casting in-joke by Olga Kurylenko from Quantum of Solace. She seems to not be in on the joke, but then who among us really is in this film?
Olga Kurylenko in 'Johnny English Strikes Again'. Photo: Supplied
Johnny English Strikes Again is directed by David Kerr who won a Bafta for the sketch comedy show That Mitchell & Webb Look. This is his first feature and he needs to do better than recreate tired old British TV sketch comedy blocking.
The real culprit here is how old fashioned it all seems. There's so much going on in the world that is worthy of spoofing - I mean, Britain alone is worthy of a whole chapter in the 2018 Planet Earth Joke Book - but this film seems blissfully unaware of it all, going through the motions as if repeating the same old tired clichés is enough.
A bit like Britain itself, then.
