Johnny English Reborn (2011)

The second outing for Rowan Atkinson's bumbling agent arrives with a title that promises renewal and delivers mostly a change of scenery. Johnny English Reborn exists to place a middle-aged man in a Tibetan monastery, then in Hong Kong, then in a Swiss fortress, and to let him knock over whatever furniture happens to be nearby. The film's cultural footprint is light. It parodies the Bond formula with affection and no agenda, and its curiosity about the wider world extends about as far as a location scout's expense report.

An ensemble of varied faces drifts through the frame. Daniel Kaluuya appears as the put-upon junior agent, Wale Ojo as a Mozambican president, and the production decamps to Macau and Hong Kong for its middle act. None of this is presented as a statement. It is casting by convenience, the sort of thing a studio arranges when a script calls for a foreign dignitary and a sidekick. Gillian Anderson runs MI7 with frosty efficiency, and Rosamund Pike plays the behavioural psychologist who understands our hero better than he understands himself. These are positions of authority, granted without ceremony, and the film never pauses to congratulate itself for granting them. The comedy stays laddish, physical, and largely indifferent to anyone's dignity.

Elsewhere the ledger is bare. The villains are disgraced spies nursing a grudge, not bankers or industrialists, so there is no economic sermon to sit through. No environmental conscience stirs. No character wrestles with identity, diagnosis, or the politics of the body. The pratfall is the unit of currency, and it is spent freely. This is a farce that wants only to make us laugh at a man falling into a fountain, and it succeeds just often enough to justify its existence. A sequel in the purest sense: more of the same, with a larger budget and a passport.