I don’t dislike Rowan Atkinson, but I prefer him when he isn’t in full on Mr. Bean mode. Sure, the Bean television series and the second Bean film (Mr. Bean’s Holiday) had flashes of comedic genius (while the first Bean film is one of the worst films ever created by human hands), but it always came across as Chaplin-lite to me. Half the time on Mr. Bean, they simply forgot to give Atkinson anything remotely funny to do and simply had him resort to pratfalls that were just too simple to be funny.

On shows like Blackadder and The Thin Blue Line, Atkinson got to display a genuine wit and talents beyond the simple slapstick that he was probably best known for. When the original Johnny English was released, I remember being hesitant about the concept. James Bond parodies are extremely simple to do and they’ve been done dozens of times before, but because of Atkinson’s ability to turn a phrase I was moderately on board. Then I saw the film and forgot pretty much everything that happened in it. I remembered not hating it, but not really being impressed or engaged by it.

This brings us to Johnny English Reborn, a film that will become seminal when speaking about forgettable films and sequels no one asked for. Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo and The Odd Couple II almost have more reasons to exist than this film. While those superfluous follow-ups strike out on huge levels, JE2 is simply a bore from start to finish with little to redeem it and little effort shown on the part of the filmmakers.

MI-7 secret agent Johnny English has been dismissed following a cock-up protecting the newly elected president of Mozambique, but is brought back into the fold by his new boss (Gillian Anderson) to take down a trio of professional assassins known as Vortex who plan to use a mysterious super weapon to kill the Chinese premier. He’s aided in his quests by his new green behind the ears partner (Daniel Kaluuya) and a behavioural psychologist (Rosamund Pike).

The plot might seem threadbare, but it is borrowing wholesale from many better films. Large elements of the story are lifted directly from The Manchurian Candidate and Grosse Pointe Blank in addition to the litany of Bond references and set pieces. Despite the simplicity of the film’s mimicry, it manages to either overthink things or just not put a lot of energy into the action on screen. This is all put into perspective by a conclusion lifted so blatantly from The Naked Gun that the Zuckers should sue over how boring the plagiarism is.

Atkinson and director Oliver Parker (An Ideal Husband, Dorian Grey) seem to think that simply by understating everything that it will become funnier. It’s not that understatement doesn’t work in a silly comedy, but when the films being parodied are over the top to begin with, the blasé nature of the jokes comes across as abject boredom. Compared to the vastly superior MacGruber, which played a similar concept in a straight manner with a wacky lead character at the centre, Johnny English Reborn feels like watching a bunch of people reading a script while sleepwalking. Like eating celery this film produces negative energy.

Aside from its lifeless nature, the film also suffers from sloppy editing, obliviously inane one liners, a script that doesn’t explain the importance of anything, and a desire to play to the youngest audience possible while still cramming in a bunch of unfunny sexual entendres. There are a few well intentioned sequences (from a bathroom meeting lifted shamelessly from Grosse Pointe Blank to a low flying helicopter chase, and a parody of the parkour sequence from Casino Royale that is funny in concept and botched in execution), but these scenes almost made me wonder if I had mono and was hallucinating sequences from better films.

For those who are fans of Atkinson’s strengths at physical comedy, there are a few pratfalls and nut shots shoehorned into the movie, but again, there is little context and little energy put into making any of them funny or resonant. It almost seems as if they were put in as afterthoughts instead of devices to move the story along.

I usually say that there are only so many ways you can describe something as being dull and boring. Those films are often the worst to write about. There have been many films this year worse than Johnny English Reborn, but few of those failures are this lifeless. Since the year is drawing to a close, I figured I would just use my stockpile of material on a film that tries so hard to being boring that it earned every single one of them.

I didn’t walk into Your Highness with high expectations, that would have been silly, but I was looking forward to it in a way that defies my general like of good taste (not unlike my relationship with Jackass.) Maybe it was just the vibe I was feeling, after seeing High School last year, upping the ante with a stoner-fantasy genre hybrid suddenly felt like exactly the nosh I was hungry for. If you have always been more of the “let’s rip hits and play D&D” than the “let’s eat marshmallows and work on our stat sheets” kind, then Your Highness would seem like a pretty obvious outing for the weekend. But as easy as stoner comedy, mixed with any genre, seems like it should be, even it has a gracefully hazed sophistication that has to be clued in on: the reason that Evil Bong has never once been equated to Up in Smoke. There isn’t a formula for this sort of subgenre as much as there is a vibe, and I’m sad to say no matter how much you tint your eyes rose coloured before entering the theatre, Your Highness doesn’t do a great job flowing with it.

Fabious (James Franco) is a handsome, dashing and skilled prince, known for journeying on brave quests and vanquishing terrible foes. This is unlike his younger brother Thadeous (Danny McBride) who’s a slacker, at best, more known for lazing about with goat men and pestering dwarves. Fabious is now about to wed Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel), a gorgeous virgin he had rescued from the clutches of the evil, magical and awkward Leezar (Justin Theroux.) Any separation anxiety is cut short when Leezar takes back his choice virgin to fulfill a dragon bearing prophecy. And finally get laid.

Fantasy fiction and stoner audiences are a really great relationship. The two styles can be so synchronic that it’s difficult to say which of fantasy’s greatest champions weren’t, ahem, inspired by the other. From Avatar to Wizards, plenty of actual fantasy films can circumstantially become potent comedies through, ahem, ‘inspiration’. Admittedly, that’s probably an active element in Wizards. So this film should have been a real cinch, simply push the naturally absurd elements of the fantasy genre, removing any subtle silk screen between it and it’s greener counterparts should make for a good, if not blunt, time. While the stoner goof motif is certainly used as an excuse for the freedom of its fantasy silliness, its balancing of priorities between the two genres is unusually mixed. And not in the way you’ll expect.

The fantasy, surprisingly, holds its own. While in this context it had all rights to just jerk about with every Tolkien trope, they shockingly worked beyond it and some legitimately neat concepts peak through. A tribal warlock who can turn his hand into a beast of snakes by dipping it in a vat of what appears to be mustard, and even Leezar’s goal, to impregnate a pretty virgin with a dragon seed, isn’t even that far out of the question for a mystical paperback. This sounds like a pretty big upside, yet it actually begins to take away from the more hoped for comedic elements. Franco and Natalie Portman (who plays a vengeful archer) play their characters a bit too straight; surrounded by plenty of others who do practically the same, it feels like they are dulling the sharper objectives of the movie. Even more hampered by similar woes is the action and fighting scenes, which are all done fairly conventionally. Ask any Jackie Chan fanatic and you would know that having funny fights can carry the comedy by itself, so to have choreographed the sword play be so narrow feels like a huge missed opportunity. And this just leaves us with the intended comedy, which doesn’t fare much better.

I am sure that finding out the humour is entirely juvenile won’t surprise or disappoint you, but what you don’t know is just how flat it all felt. Almost every punchline was about dicks, and if it wasn’t a punchline it was just throwing the word ‘fuck’ around the script hoping it would sometimes click with the audience. Even weed, yes, weed, which by the very title should be the assumed uniting force is barely present at all. Complaining that ‘they weren’t high enough’ isn’t a very typical grievance, but in a self labelled stoner comedy it is pretty surprising that there are only two brief encounters with lush dank in the feature length film. Get off your high horse and just get high, stoners are hilarious and you know it. This film, sadly, isn’t as funny as a pothead trying to justify his own actions.

I was hoping for a re-enactment of playing Dungeons & Dragons with your most blazed and vulgar friends, pushing a quest forward without taking it very seriously, instead what we have is more akin screaming wiener while The Black Cauldron plays. The gags all seem similar and by the second act it neglects to either introduce a new angle to the humour or even let any of it accumulate into a larger jest. The best jokes were used up in the very first trailer (that got me so dang excited too!) If you think getting ‘inspired’ beforehand may aid you in this quest, I regret to inform you that the fantastical of Your Highness never taps into that chaotic fiasco which usually unleashes such guttural giggles. It seems to worry about respecting its own fantasy elements too much to respect its comedy.

Thanks to richpee for the link

The video really illustrates how ridiculous Emmerich’s epic disaster movie is going to be, but we’ll all go to see the insane spectacle anyways.  Kudos to the maker of the video for using music from Incredible Bongo Band.

Thanks to SirMildredPierce for the link.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What a delicious little send up of Michael Bay and company.  Sadly this is not a real film(SHOCK!), but in a few years when the studios start to run out of 1980′s kids cartoons to defile, I’m sure we’ll eventually see a My Little Pony movie.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you haven’t played Shadow of the Colossus I urge you to do so, it is easily one of the greatest games ever made.

Since The Onion is actually a faux-news site, you’d expect that the game Close Range doesn’t actually exist.  However, you’d be wrong on that account, a demo of the Close Range is available on the games “official site“.  Brilliantly zinging the video game industry, review community and fans in one fell swoop.  Well played Onion, well played.

Play Close Range Demo @ Close Range Official Site