Posts tagged James Bond
“Johnny English Reborn” Inspector Clouseau As a Bumbling Bond
Oct 27th
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.”
“Hanna” Bad Premise, Worse Execution
May 12th
(“Bad Premise, Worse Execution”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Hanna is one of those movies whose filmmakers believe they are being clever by making the movie come full circle from beginning to end, just as they must have believed they could make the story more interesting by omitting important details.
And the premise is so simple that the one-sentence pitch to studio executives could easily have been “Sixteen-year-old girl as James Bond.”
Then just to turn the story on its head even more, the Bad Guys in this movie are usually the Good Guys in a James Bond film.
Hanna is played by Saoirse Ronan, who received an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of the “evil sister” in the 2007 Atonement.
When we first see Hanna, she is living with her father, played by Eric Bana, in a cabin in the wilds of northern Finland, where they have been living for 15 years and he is training her for some sort of life-or-death mission.
In fact, he tells her, “She won’t stop until you’re dead. Or she is.”
“She” is Marissa Wiebling, played by Cate Blanchett using a Texas accent that is so phony it is laughable, and Hanna’s father and Marissa have a history that we get only a glimpse of in one flashback.
We eventually learn that Hanna’s father used to be a CIA agent until something went wrong, and that is why he and Hanna are hiding out in northern Finland, because Marissa and her fellow CIA agents are still searching for them.
However, when Hanna believes she is ready, she activates a signal that identifies her location to Marissa, and Hanna’s father then takes off after confirming with Hanna where they will meet in Berlin.
So, Hanna is captured, and then the movie gets even more ridiculous.
Hanna escapes from Marissa in a gruesome and unbelievable scene, but she discovers that she is in Morocco, and she must somehow get to Berlin without any money.
In other words, the movie becomes an absurd chase movie.
As a matter of fact, the movie goes from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous and then to be so ridiculous that it is laughable and finally forgettable.
The premise is bad, and the execution is worse.
Hanna is a quite elaborate rendition of a simple story made more complicated by the omission of significant details.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Sherlock Holmes” Deconstructing Holmes
Dec 30th
Deconstructing Holmes
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
SHERLOCK HOLMES takes one of the most famous of all fictional characters, the brilliant but eccentric London detective created in the late 1800s by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and turns him into a modern-day action hero.
The setting is still London in the late 1800s, but Robert Downey Jr.
plays Holmes as just as much a martial-arts fighter as a brilliant thinker.
And Jude Law plays Dr. Watson, Sherlock’s partner, colleague, and writer of Sherlock’s famous cases, as just as much an equal in the martial arts as Holmes is.
To steal a line from somebody else, “This is not your great-grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes.”
In fact, Watson himself may be onto something, because a major subplot in this mess of a movie is that Dr. Watson is engaged and preparing to move out of their digs at 221B Baker Street.
The fault, Dear Audience, lies with the writers and the director, Guy Ritchie, known for his rock-’em, sock-’em modern-day British crime-caper comedies, but most famous for being the recently divorced husband of Madonna.
When the movie opens, Holmes is in a foul mood, and Watson says to Mrs.
Hudson, the woman who keeps their rooms as tidy as she is allowed to, “He just needs another case, that’s all.”
The last case that Holmes had and presumably solved was three months ago, but before he acquires a new case, Holmes is invited to dinner in a restaurant with Watson and his fiancee, Mary, who insists that Holmes examine her at the table and tell her what his observations reveal about her.
To say that it doesn’t go well would be the understatement of the 19th century.
Holmes eventually gets a case that involves black magic, a midget, a plot to rule England and to reacquire the United States, and Holmes’s female nemesis, Irene Adler, played by the beautiful Rachel McAdams.
Yes, this movie is more like a James Bond adventure than a story about the Sherlock Holmes we have come to know, love, respect, and admire.
The movie is preposterous, the story is preposterous, the action scenes are preposterous, even the acting is preposterous.
And, unfortunately, the ending has all the earmarks of a sequel in the works.
SHERLOCK HOLMES is a silly deconstruction of the four novels and 56 short stories that we have read and loved.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
