Welcome back Johnny

By

Areesha Junejo

My friends and I went to see Johnny English Reborn a few days back. Being a huge Rowan Atkinson and Johnny English fan I had high expectations from the movie.

At the end of Johnny English (2003), English failed a mission and went to live in Tibet to learn martial arts. On his return back to the headquarters, he got news about international assassins posing as a threat to security which meant he needed to come back on the case. In the sequel, he has to hunt down the international assassins and stop them from causing complete international mayhem.

The movie and this I tell you with a heavy heart, completely let me down: the spark that Johnny English had, the comical theatrics, the fast paced witty dialogues, the complete klutz that we fell in love with in the first movie, were nowhere to be found in this one.

And where was Bough? Huh? What was the writer thinking? Where was the intelligent yet equally clumsy sidekick that we adored? Instead we got Agent Tucker (played by Daniel Kaluuya) who was funny but forgettable. The dialogues were slow and boring at times, and while we did let out a laugh or two at intervals that were too far apart for my taste, they weren’t 'Johnny English' laughs.

English got sophisticated with age and none of us wanted that. We wanted to see him erupt disaster, defeat the villain, get the girl and emerge as a hero; what we got instead was just another spy movie. So my advice for those who have seen Johnny English (2003), this (Johnny English Reborn) is not a territory you want to venture into. It’ll ruin your hilarious memories of the first one.