> July 18 - Johnny English
>
> Rowan Atkinson is funny, but he's not infallible. "Bean" was funny in spots, but it was mostly a poor adaptation of the much funnier Mr. Bean series. Johnny English is a spoof of James Bond. Austin Powers aside, Bond spoofs don't tend to work, because what people don't realize is that James Bond is *already* a spoof of more serious spy films. Making fun of something that's already got its tongue in its cheek doesn't tend to work. Still, we'll see.

Well, Johnny English is already out over here, and I went to see it last night.

Here's my quick summary of it:

I found it to be rather like watching Moonraker, with a few notable differences:

1). It was more faithful to its source material.

2). The love interest was better.

3). The villain was better.

4). The jokes were funnier.

To go into more detail:

It's *not* a James Bond spoof, and I wouldn't describe it as such. Rather, it spoofs Bond, while also spoofing every spy story cliche anyone ever came up with, and introducing us to a hero who thinks he's James Bond (or Agent One), but is really far more like Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther series. The plot is of course hopelessly insane, but that doesn't matter, because all it does it get us from one gag to the next. Not that that's a bad thing. The best bit is probably what happens during the theme tune, as Johnny English heads to his new boss' office to recieve his mission orders, but gets lost on the way and spends forever wandering around aimlessly. The theme itself is also funny: it's a parody of Bond main themes, but again it's far enough away from them not to be an imitation.

Dammit, I want to say so much about it but I can't quite put it into words.

Other than it's worth seeing, just because it's so dratted funny. The best gags are the scene when he's fighting himself and the opening one with the dogs (I'll say no more).

Oh, and for the record, the voice-overs before and after the ending coronation scene were done by Chris Tarrant, real-life Capital FM Breakfast Show host, and Trevor McDonald, who does the newsreading for ITV.

Zarn"now, the one place we can be sure they didn't go is through the floAAAAAAAARGH!"iwoop