Johnny English

Rowan Atkinson - Johnny English
John Malkovich - Pascal Sauvage
Natalie Imbruglia - Lorna Campbell
Ben Miller - Bough
Douglas McFerran - Vendetta
Tim Pigott-Smith - Pegasus

Johnny English marks the reuniting of British comedian Rowan Atkinson with Working Title Films since their internationally successful collaboration on Bean, a movie based on Atkinson's television series. Johnny English is also developed from an earlier Atkinson TV incarnation - Barclaycard's spoof Bond adverts that featured the rubber-faced one as an inept secret agent.

After Britain's top agents are all assassinated, Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson), an accident-prone MI-7 agent is sent on a vital mission to guard the recently restored Crown Jewels from Machiavellian French business magnate Sauvage (a strangely accented John Malkovich). Sadly, the priceless gems are stolen from under Johnny's nose and soon after, Queen Elizabeth II abdicates, leaving the path to the throne open for Sauvage The inexperienced yet intensely enthusiastic English is thrown into a murky world of fast cars, high tech gadgets, top secret info - aided by his long-suffering sidekick Bough (Ben Miller). As coronation day approaches Johnny plots to save the day, while the object of his desires, sexy double agent Lorna Campbell (Ex-"Neighbours" beauty Natalie Imbruglia) gets him hot and bothered under collar.

The film is an amiable satire for all the family that never quite reaches the same heights of absurdity as Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau. Despite Atkinson also being a skilled physical comedian he can't overcome some of the weakness in the script with sight gags alone. Nevertheless, English contains some cleverly crafted comic set-pieces, plenty of entertaining action scenes and Peter Howitt's direction is sprightly. Like Bean, Johnny English may go down better with overseas audiences and a probable sequel will develop the character further as the venture looks tailor-made for a franchise.