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1、一S Can we all pretty much agree that the spy genre has been spoofed to death? The James Bond movies have supplied the target for more than 40 years, and generations of Bond parodies have come and gone, from Dean Martins Matt Helm to Mike Myers Austin Powers. If Austin Powers is the funniest of the B

2、ondian parodies, Johnny English is the least necessary, a mild-mannered ramble down familiar paths.The movie stars Rowan Atkinson, best known in America as Mr. Bean, star of Bean (1997), and as the star of the PBS reruns of The Black Adder, where he played countless medieval schemers and bumblers in

3、 the most gripping sitcom since 1380. Hes the master of looking thoughtful after having committed a grievous breach of manners, logic, the law, personal hygiene or common sense.In Johnny English, he plays a character who became famous in Britain as the star of a long-running series of credit card co

4、mmercials. Johnny English is a low-level functionary in the British Secret Service, pressed into active duty when a bomb destroys all of the other agents. His assignment: Foil a plot to steal the Crown Jewels.The evil mastermind is Pascal Sauvage (John Malkovich), a French billionaire who believes h

5、is family was robbed of the crown two centuries ago. Now the head of a megabillion-dollar international chain of prisons, he poses as a benefactor who pays to protect the jewels in new theft-proof quarters in the Tower of London-but actually plans to steal them and co-opt the Archbishop of Canterbur

6、y to crown him king. And how does Queen Elizabeth II feel about this? The films funniest moment has her signing an abdication form after a gun is pointed at the head of one of her beloved corgis.The movie is a series of scenes demonstrating how dangerously incompetent Johnny English is, as when he l

7、ectures on how the thieves got into the Tower without noticing he is standing on the edge of a tunnel opening. He cant even be trusted to drive during a chase scene, and spends most of one in a car suspended from a moving wreckers crane. Meanwhile, the beautiful Lorna Campbell (Natalie Imbruglia) tu

8、rns up coincidentally wherever he goes, performing a variety of functions, of which the only explicable one is to be the beautiful Lorna Campbell.Malkovich does what can be done with Pascal Sauvage, I suppose, including the French accent we assume is deliberately bad, since Malkovich lives in France

9、 and no doubt has a better one. The character is such a stick and a stooge, however, that all Malkovich can do is stand there and be mugged by the script. Funnier work is done by Ben Miller, as Johnnys sidekick Bough (pronounced Boff). After Johnny breaks up the wrong funeral, Bough saves the day by

10、 passing him off as an escaped lunatic.And so on. Rowan Atkinson is terrifically popular in Britain, less so here, because as a nation we do not find understatement hilarious. Johnny English plays like a tired exercise, a spy spoof with no burning desire to be that, or anything else. The thing you h

11、ave to credit Mike Myers for is that he loves to play Austin Powers and is willing to try anything for a laugh. Atkinson seems to have had Johnny English imposed upon him. And thus upon us.二Would you believe. that Johnny English is the most amazingly funny satire ever made about spies? No. Would you

12、 believe. that its a pretty funny spoof of the Bond movies? No. Would you believe. that its a sporadically amusing lampoon in the same vein as Austin Powers? No. Would you believe. that its basically a dog that should have been released in August with all of the other late-summer refuse? Yes. I didn

13、t have high hopes for Johnny English. After all, there have been so many 007 parodies in the last few years that the genre is oversaturated. (In fact, with Die Another Day, even the legitimate Bond movies have gotten into the act. That movie was as close to self-parody as the venerable series has go

14、tten since The Man with the Golden Gun.) If there was cause for optimism, however, it had to do with Rowan Atkinson, the gifted British comedian behind such ventures as Black Adder and Mr. Bean. Sadly, although Atkinson can remove his trousers from underneath a bathing suit on national TV, he cant i

15、nvigorate this overused premise. Johnny English is a tamer Austin Powers crossed with Get Smart, with very little in the way of effective humor. Atkinson plays Britains most inept spy, Johnny English. At the beginning of the movie, he has a desk job, but, when all of the senior agents are killed in

16、a bomb blast, Johnny and his assistant, Bough (Ben Miller), are recruited to go on active duty and discover who stole the Crown Jewels. The thief turns out to be a Frenchman named Pascal Sauvage (John Malkovich, employing one of the worst French accents in recent film history). Sauvage has designs u

17、pon the British throne, but, in order to recognize his goal, he must force the Queen to abdicate, find someone to impersonate the Archbishop of Canterbury, and evade the efforts of Johnny, Bough, and a pretty Interpol agent named Lorna Campbell (Natalie Imbruglia). Although the level of gross-out co

18、medy in Johnny English doesnt achieve that of Austin Powers, theres still a memorably gut-churning moment in which Johnny climbs through an active sewer pipe and emerges from a toilet. In terms of failed comedic moments, that ones right up there with the scene in which the Archbishop of Canterbury b

19、ares his buttocks for the entire cathedral to see. Laughing at these scenes requires that the viewer be drunk, stoned, or under the age of 14. To be fair, Johnny English does have one amusing sequence. It occurs after Johnny mistakenly injects himself with a muscle relaxant and spends the next few m

20、oments flopping around like a rag doll. As far as uniqueness goes, theres little that this movie attempts that hasnt been explored in films from A Man Called Flint to Spy Hard to Austin Powers. Director Peter Howitt, whose last memorable movie was his debut, Sliding Doors, doesnt seem to understand

21、whats funny and whats routine. In the final analysis, Johnny English isnt just forgettable; its a waste of time. But, for those looking for something positive, this is the only movie I can recall that features music from both ABBA (Does Your Mother Know) and Handel (Zadok the Priest). Lets hear it f

22、or musical diversity!三“A brilliantly funny Clown for all Seasons”Of all the main character types in film and other performance genres, the Clown is perhaps the only one permitted exemption from the usual requirements of the character arc. To satisfy an audience, heroes, heroines and villains must st

23、rive and develop through dealing with a variety of conflicts, obstacles, suffering and deprivation. By the end, some new realisation should be reached, some growth or lesson gained at least. While the Clown character may well do all the above, s/he is not necessarily required to do anything but rema

24、in a figure of fun. If s/he does learn something, it may well be of an appropriately simple nature, and the interaction is usually humorous. By definition the Clown is an unaware fool. Usually a person of little actual self-knowledge, he possesses delusions of his own abilities the faade of which he

25、 believes convinces everyone around him and which he takes pains to maintain. The Clown represents the common man stripped bare of all but his self-conceit. We can both identify affectionately with his woes, and at the same be relieved that we are not so foolish as he. Secretly, we may even be glad

26、of the lessons he illustrates, or ruefully recognise our own. Often the quintessential Clown is so foolish that s/he remains unaffected by tragedy in any lasting way although, of course, there is a sub-type of sad clown that makes us laugh by being so morose. The mythological counterpart of the Clow

27、n is the far more complex and amoral Trickster, whose function is change through the chaos principle. Like the Trickster, the Clown often succeeds where more serious efforts may fail. Superficial as froth, the quintessential Clown disarms gravity. By the end of the journey, when serious villains hav

28、e been hoist by their own petard and the Clowns well-intentioned and bumbling efforts have somehow achieved their aim despite him, our own load may be a little lighter. And while the Clown, despite the chaos he engenders all around him, may well have saved the day, he essentially remains his good-he

29、arted, unknowing self (unlike the devilish Trickster, who transforms to become the Wise Fool). In this case, it is we who have been through the journey, and we who have changed. Johnny English, like Rowan Atkinsons other creation Mr Bean, is just such a quintessential Clown. In this movie he uses hi

30、s marvellously rubbery face and body to play a very earnest and suave secret agent la James Bond who has to save the Crown Jewels (no less) from being stolen by arch villain Pascale Sauvage (John Malkovich). The reason English in the beginning very low on the secret agent food chain gets this missio

31、n suggests some idiocy and incompetence in the British Secret Service itself. Blowing up all the secret agents in England (except English) as they dutifully attend the funeral of Agent One, despite it being “the most secure place in England”, is remarkably easy, but it gives Atkinson, with one movem

32、ent of his eyes, an opportunity for a magnificently timed reaction.Johnny Englishs assistant is Bough, played with some anxiety by the excellent Ben Miller. Not exactly the straight man, Bough often gives what the audiences reaction is to English. The humour in his character is from the fact that th

33、ough he is probably smarter than his boss, he is bound by the hierarchical structure of the Service to do as he says, to cover up for his many mistakes and to try to prevent as many as he can. The scene in the cemetery where he extricates English from making a grave error is brilliantly funny and il

34、lustrates well how the dynamic between them works.Beautiful pop-singer Natalie Imbruglia plays Agent Lorna Campbell completely straight, allowing Atkinsons flamboyance full rein. Her natural Australian accent is part of her charm and her character also gives to a degree the audience reaction to Engl

35、ish. The scene between Lorna and English where she tells him what he makes her feel like doing to him is a masterpiece of reversals of meaning, misunderstandings, expectations and disappointments. Atkinsons face as he registers and responds to all of this is classic.John Malkovich plays the French v

36、illain Pascale Sauvage who wants to claim the crown of England for himself. His character sends up traditional rivalry between the French and the English beautifully, especially since his two assistants are an Italian, Carlos Vendetta (Douglas McFerran) and a German, Dieter Klein (Steve Nicholson).

37、Malkovichs portrayal is both elegant and arrogantly louche, his accent perfect. Alternately mildly amused in a superior way and highly irritated by the unstoppable English, it is this irritation that finally undermines Sauvages faade of benevolence into an ill-advised tantrum at the worst possible m

38、oment with a completely ridiculous and hilarious outcome.As usual with Rowan Atkinsons farcical parodies sight gags are in abundance as are misunderstandings and the consequences of unconscious actions to which the audience is privy but the characters are not. There is some (literal) toilet humour o

39、f a gross kind that is the one thing that probably should have been omitted. The title song by Robbie Williams “A Man for All Seasons” is suitably bright and Bondesque and the “Johnny English Theme” performed by the appropriately named, sexy, all-female violinist group Bond is a wonderful note on wh

40、ich to end this very funny movie.四Silly spies are meat and two veg for comic actors. Roger Moore played one for years. His name was James Bond.On the face of it, Johnny English is spoof Fleming, although originated as a series of TV commercials Rowan Atkinson did for Barclaycard. The clumsy secret a

41、gent who makes disastrous decisions, breaks into wrong buildings, carries a gun that falls apart when fired and climbs up a sewage pipe at the busiest time of the morning cannot fail to amuse. Well, sure-fire hits have bombed before. Does anyone remember Hudson Hawk?Johnny English is not a complete

42、moron. Hes accident prone, who, unlike Michael Crawfords Frank Spencer, lacks a sympathetic base. You dont care about him, or whether he retrieves the stolen Crown Jewels, or kisses the girl (Natalie Imbruglia), or outwits the villain (John Malkovich). Hes a fool, rather than a friend, which makes a

43、 difference in the spy game. The success of Knock On Wood, a classic Fifties comedy thriller, was the warmth of Danny Kayes performance. Atkinson doesnt do warm. He does NERD ALERT!The true weakness of the film is the script - stand down Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, William Davies. A single gag runs th

44、rough it and you dread the next time Agent English says, The word mistake is not one that appears in my dictionary, only to make yet another almighty cock up. There is a reserve joke, similarly overused, which concerns Bough (Ben Miller), Englishs tame civil servant, who, in his quiet unobtrusive wa

45、y, does everything right.There are two surprise pleasures. Australian pop singer Imbruglia plays the English version of a Bond babe. Shes very good at it. In fact, she has personality to burn and rides a mean motor bike, not to mention displaying kick boxing skills that should encourage Jackie Chan

46、to take down her number. Shes a looker, too, and, like Kylie, an Old Neighbourian.The real heat comes from Malkovichs French entrepreneur, who has made a fortune building private prisons throughout Europe. His plan to be crowned king of England, so that he can turn the entire island into a fortress

47、jail, is as batty as a church spire, but, hey, why not?Wearing a shoulder-length wig and slipping oh-so-easily into Gallic charm, he demonstrates an uncanny knack at comedic timing. While Atkinson is busting a gut to achieve the phantom of a giggle, Malkovich lays back and lets the idiocy wash over him.