{"id":10497,"date":"2018-10-29T20:13:09","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T00:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=10497"},"modified":"2019-01-12T14:40:52","modified_gmt":"2019-01-12T19:40:52","slug":"review-johnny-english-strikes-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-johnny-english-strikes-again\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Spy Spoof <i>Johnny English Strikes Again<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Johnny English, Rowan Atkinson&#8217;s bumbling James Bond character who is a more talkative version of his Mr. Bean character, returns for a third outing in <strong><em>Johnny English Strikes Again<\/em><\/strong>, a family-friendly spy spoof whose only flaw is that it has zero interest in the characters who aren&#8217;t Johnny English.<\/p>\n<p>This time around, Johnny is brought out of retirement to help the Prime Minister (Emma Thompson, bless her) find the hacker who exposed all of MI7&#8217;s current agents. While Johnny is working on that, crossing paths with a beautiful, enigmatic woman (Olga Kurylenko) who might also be a spy, the PM is working with an Elon Musk-like tech billionaire named Jason Volta (Jake Lacy) to improve the U.K.&#8217;s internet access. (If you are very smart, maybe you can figure out who the hacker was!)<\/p>\n<p>Returning screenwriter William Davies and first-time director David Kerr fill the movie with cartoony gags, many of them centered on Johnny&#8217;s old-school methods vs. the modern ways of espionage. These jokes range from hilarious to irritating, and Atkinson&#8217;s gift for physical comedy, pantomime, and facial expressions remains superb &#8212; but Johnny English is the film&#8217;s only funny character. Everyone else is written and played straight, as in a regular spy movie, giving us nothing to cling to but the story, which is too simple to hold an adult&#8217;s imagination for long.<\/p>\n<h3>Grade: <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">C<\/span><\/h3>\n<h5><em>1 hr., 29 min.; rated PG for\u00a0some action violence, rude humor, language and brief nudity<\/em><\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<div><em>Join our <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crookedmarquee.us16.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=dc6679cd997ec610eeaf50562&amp;id=db71dbf4c3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mailing list<\/a><\/strong>! Follow us on <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CrookedMarquee\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a><\/strong>! <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/writers-guidelines\/\">Write<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0for us!<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Johnny English, Rowan Atkinson&#8217;s bumbling James Bond character who is a more talkative version of his Mr. Bean character, returns [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":10498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}