Official Website

“Inspector Clouseau As a Bumbling Bond”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Johnny English Reborn is a sequel we could have done without to a movie I had never even heard of, the 2003 Johnny English.

Again starring Rowan Atkinson as the title character in what was intended to be a spoof of the James Bond movies, this movie is so bad that it needs to be put at the top of the list of a whole new category: “Movies I Never Want to Hear About Again, Much Less See in the First Place.”

This so-called comedy is so bad that it caused only one chuckle from the entire audience, and that was from the only other person in the auditorium with me at the first showing on the opening day of its release.

This movie is so bad that it gives a whole new meaning to “piece of crap.”

This movie is so bad that the rest of this review could consist entirely of sentences beginning with that phrase.

On the other hand, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times, this same movie “is a hit overseas,” which just goes to show you that there is no accounting for taste.

Atkinson plays British spy Johnny English, who five years earlier was the top agent for MI7, but then he was in charge of security for an incident in Mozambique, things went badly, and now just the mention of “Mozambique” causes his right eye to twitch uncontrollably.

Johnny claims that he was only partly at fault, but when the movie opens, he is in Tibet, where he went to forget his shame and study martial arts with Tibetan monks.

However, MI7 wants him back for a special mission, although he is told that guns, fast cars, and chauvinism are on their way out in the modern world of international spying.

In Tibet, Johnny was told, “You are not young, but with age comes wisdom,” and he gets a chance to prove that in his new assignment.

He gets a chance to prove it, but of course he doesn’t in a movie that is just one sight gag and bad joke after another.

The late, great Peter Sellers could have made this movie much better with his Inspector Clouseau character, but Atkinson is no Sellers.

Johnny English Reborn is a poor man’s Inspector Clouseau as a bumbling James Bond.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”