I just watched these back-to-back, altho I'd seen Johnny English in the theater in 2003.
The two films star Rowan Atkinson as Johnny English, secret agent for MI-7, but not exactly the best. In the first film, he starts out at a desk job, providing dossiers to the "real" field agents. But when those top agents get blown up, only Agent English and his sidekick are left to track down the perpetrators.
Sound familiar? It got reused in 2008 for Get Smart. Don't feel bad for the writers, tho—Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, and William Davies. Davies, along with Hamish McColl, stole the rest of Get Smart for Johnny English Reborn.
Not that anybody should really be proud, of course. All spy spoofs by definition borrow heavily from the James Bond films—right down to the Aston Martins. Speaking of which, both films were made for a pittance compared to a Bond film and yet look fantastic.
In JE, English must protect the British crown jewels and, when they are inevitably stolen from out from under his nose, retrieve them from a crazy Frenchman played by John Malkovich. Australian soap star/singer Natalie Imbruglia is the beauty, and English has a rather superfluous sidekick named Bough ("Boff") and the typical fuming boss.
It has some very good action set pieces, including a chase with English's Aston Martin hanging off the crane of a flat bed tow truck. And the dialog is fairly sharp and effective. Imbruglia's banter in particular is precise and sexy, but she gets very little to do as the film goes on; she should have replaced Bough entirely. Most of the humor is either slapstick or humiliation, but most of it works. A somewhat flat ending featuring Malkovich ranting in his ridiculous accent (I mean different from the ridiculous way he usually talks) is raised by Imbruglia and the reprise of a spectacular theme tune delivered by Robbie Williams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbuN-00C468
In JER, English is recalled after five years in disgrace after a failed mission in Mozambique. He is the only agent that an ex-CIA agent will talk to about a plot to assassinate the Chinese Prime Minister. English rejoins British Intelligence (now known as Toshiba British Intelligence), and goes to work for a new boss played by Gillian Anderson (looking radiant). However, the beauty here is supposed to be Rosamund Pike as a staff psychologist. Her introduction is fairly awkward, coming rather casually in an office in the middle of Anderson's scene.
English is given another superfluous sidekick—Tucker, who is at least more interesting than Bough was, but again should have been replaced by the girl. Dominic West is Agent Simon Ambrose, who introduces us to Atkinson's old Blackadder buddy Tim MacInerny as a disabled version of Q. It's a natural gadget scene that was missing from the first film and works very well here—we are later told to suspect a mole in Toshiba British Intelligence and here we've met five suspects at the beginning of the film.
Richard Schiff is the ex-CIA man who explains that a mysterious group of three assassins called "Vortex" is behind the assassination plot. After a rather funny parody of Casino Royale's parkour chase, English is humiliated. Rosamund Pike helps English recall a suppressed memory: Vortex was behind his failure years before in Mozambique. This clue leads to the second member of the organization, which also ends badly because of an Asian assassin.
If it seems odd that a trio of assassins would hire another assassin to assassinate each other in spite of their reputed collusion in another assassination, you've struck upon the film's secondary problem: its lack of a defined and theatrical villain. The primary one is that the dialog isn't as sharp, and the humiliation and slapstick humor falls flat a little more often than in the first film. An elaborate chase scene with a motorized wheelchair, for example, is neither as funny or as exciting as it was meant to be.
However, once English and Tucker get to Switzerland to stop the assassination, things do pick up. Tucker gets something to do. Atkinson gets a funny fight with himself that's even better than the one in the first film. And Pike brings home an effective bit of drama that, combined with a nice action sequence, makes for a solid climax. Robbie Williams' "A Man for All Seasons" theme is sadly missing, but the credits sequence where English makes dinner is fun.
Overall, both films are most effective for fans of Atkinson and James Bond. I'm both and still feel that the second film in particular is a bit familiar and clumsy. The poor integration of the female leads in both is a big mistake that Get Smart and the first Austin Power movie didn't make and which gave them more heart.
