To show you how far back my memory goes on these things, in January of 2017, for example, I clearly remember watching the 2009 film Mystery Team while we were staying in Los Angeles and I was in the home stretch of my viewings for that year. That viewing was on the 7th of January, and came up as a joint viewing with my wife -- I'm sure a reluctant viewing on my part, but I'm also sure that I never let on about it, because any time she wants to watch a movie with me, I'm game for whatever it is.
Then two years ago it was an unscheduled rewatch, on the 14th of January, while we were away for the weekend with friends. They wanted to watch something that our older kids could also watch -- I'm pretty sure my younger son was sequestered elsewhere for this one -- and though I'm sure I tried to nudge them toward a 2023 release, what we ended up watching was Michael Bay's The Rock. The funny thing is, most of the people watching ended up peeling off before it ended, and because I like to complete what I started (so I can add it to my lists, in this case my list of rewatches), I was one of the few who finished.
Of course I am leading up to telling you about that exception for this year, which will live on in my memory largely because of how much I disliked it.
First I should tell you that we are becoming big Rowan Atkinson fans in my household. A few years ago we really got into watching Man vs. Bee, his Netflix TV series about an extended fight between a housesitter and a buzzing insect in a fancy smart home, which I actually wrote about here despite the fact that it is not a movie. (And yes, my mention of it now means that I am tagging this not-movie for the second time on my movie blog.)
Well, Atkinson has made a sequel to Man vs. Bee called Man vs. Baby, which we also watched earlier this month -- though should have watched last month because it's set at Christmas. Oh well, I bent my usual rules that stipulate you aren't allowed to watch Christmas-related material after Christmas. I think I enjoyed this one even more, because Atkinson's main character is less cringe-worthy and more competent this time around, which is something we really want for this charming, loveable goof.
That is not the charming, loveable goof I got when I watched Johnny English with my younger son a few nights ago. He rewatched Man vs. Bee after we watched Man vs. Baby and was primed for more Atkinson material.
It was actually me that suggested my own reluctant viewing this time around, but only because he had already told me he'd looked up the Johnny English movies to figure out where we might find them on our various streaming services. At the time he mentioned it, it was in the context of something we might do together at some unspecified future date. A couple hours later, I got the benefit of seeming like a hero for "spontaneously" suggesting it for that very evening, which proved to him that I hadn't earlier been just nodding in generic consent without ever intending to do anything about it.
Now that I've seen Johnny English, I'm not sure I have any interest in seeing the sequels, even as a gesture of good fathering to my son.
I think my son did like it more than I did, but he probably couldn't have liked it less.
My biggest problem is that this movie does not showcase the same kind but hopeless Atkinson that we usually get, who stumbles into disaster despite his best intentions. I don't know that I want Atkinson to play the same role in everything, but the specific comedic persona he had built on things like Mr. Bean and later burnished with the Man vs. shows does make you long to see that brand put to use. (I also showed my son his one scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral, because obviously it would not be worth watching the whole movie just for that one scene -- not for a 12-year-old.)
And to be fair, I'm not sure that this is the type of role Atkinson has always played. Although I didn't watch the whole series and I saw the parts of it I saw many years ago, I think his role in Blackadder was probably a lot more acerbic.
Still, it was not what we were hoping for, to see him as an idiot, yes, but more of a blowhard idiot, whose embarrassments result more from terrible assumptions and the ways he parades around like a fool in the prosecution of those assumptions. Maybe a purely bumbling secret agent would have been too similar to the existing incarnations of Inspector Gadget, but this was the version of Atkinson we wanted but did not get in Johnny English. We wanted to like him, at least, but Johnny English made that impossible.
More to the point, it just wasn't funny. This is not easily quantifiable, except that I can tell you the only laughs I squeezed out were forced, so my son would not think I was entirely hating the experience. When he laughed, it was with some uncertainty, and he had to look over to me to see what I thought -- which read to me as an attempt to force his own laughter.
The one thing I did really like in the movie was Natalie Imbruglia, the singer of the big pop hit "Torn," who I had either forgotten or never known also tried to be an actress for a short time. It's unclear to me why she didn't succeed. She's beautiful here, but also has plenty of charisma and as much of the necessary other skills that this sort of love interest role requires.
Given that the movie was enough of a hit to prompt two more sequels, you couldn't say that its poor reception was the thing that prevented her from getting more than just a sporadic amount of further work. Maybe people at the time thought that everything in the movie worked except for Natalie Imbruglia, whereas I thought just the opposite. (Another of the movie's casualties: John Malkovich with a very exaggerated French accent.)
If I do watch the sequels, suffice it to say that I'll try to push them until after I've finished watching 2025 movies. At least the next one will be free on one of our services. (Yes, I had to pay to rent the first, adding insult to injury.)
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