Johnny English is a 2003 spy action comedy film directed by Peter Howitt and written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and William Davies. Produced by StudioCanal and Working Title Films, the film centres on a clumsy MI7 agent in a mission to find the thieves of the Crown Jewels and retrieve the regalia.
Starring Rowan Atkinson in the title role along with Natalie Imbruglia, Ben Miller and John Malkovich, it is the first installment of the Johnny English film series and serves as a parody and homage to the spy genre, mainly the James Bond film series, as well as Atkinson's Mr. Bean character. The character is also related to Atkinson's bumbling spy character from a series of adverts in the United Kingdom for Barclaycard in the 1990s. The film was filmed in various locations across England, particularly in London and Buckinghamshire. Specific sites include Mentmore Towers, the Maughan Library, and the Freemason's Hall. The movie's climax was filmed on the French Riviera.
Distributed by Universal Pictures, the film was released theatrically in the United States on 18 July 2003. The film received mixed reviews from critics but was commercially successful and grossed $160 million worldwide against a budget of $40 million. The film was released in the United Kingdom on 11 April 2003 and topped the country's box office for the next three weekends, before being overtaken by X2. It was followed by two sequels, Johnny English Reborn (2011) and Johnny English Strikes Again (2018).
Contents
Plot
Johnny English, a kindhearted but clumsy MI7 clerk, dreams of becoming the agency’s top agent. After Agent One is killed, followed by all of MI7's remaining agents at his funeral, both due to English's incompetence, he is left as the only agent capable of finishing Agent One's mission.
Assigned to thwart a plot to steal the newly restored Crown Jewels at an event hosted by French prison magnate Pascal Sauvage, English meets a mysterious woman named Lorna Campbell at the jewels' unveiling at the Tower of London. During a sudden blackout, the Crown Jewels are stolen and English accidentally knocks out the head of security. He fights an imaginary assailant to cover his mistakes, and gives a false description of the unseen suspect to MI7 head Pegasus.
English and his assistant Jeremy Bough follow a tunnel dug beneath the jewel's display case and confront German thieves Dieter Klein and Klaus Vendetta, who escape in a hearse. English loses them by pursuing a different hearse and ends up gatecrashing a funeral, until Bough saves him by having him pretend he is an escaped mental patient.
Sauvage is revealed to be Klein and Vendetta's employer, and instructs the thieves to eliminate English. Pegasus, a friend of Sauvage, refuses to believe English and Bough's claims that Sauvage is involved and orders them to exclude him from the investigation. English and Bough are attacked by Vendetta, who escapes when English mistakenly attacks Bough. English again encounters Campbell and, having seen her at two crime scenes, his suspicions deepen when no record of her can be found on a single government computer.
Determined to expose Sauvage, English and Bough infiltrate his headquarters and learn that Sauvage, a descendant of Charles Edward Stuart, plans to make himself king using an impostor Archbishop of Canterbury. English observes that the fake Archbishop has a tattoo on his backside saying Jesus is coming – look busy. They encounter and try to interrogate Klein, but English accidentally injects him and himself with a powerful muscle relaxant. Campbell appears and rescues the two, revealing herself to be an Interpol agent also tracking Sauvage. Attempting to inform Pegasus of his discoveries, English crashes a reception hosted by Sauvage and makes a fool of himself due to the relaxant. As a result, Pegasus dishonourably removes him from the case.
Cast
Rowan Atkinson as Johnny English
Natalie Imbruglia as Lorna Campbell, an INTERPOL agent
Ben Miller as Jeremy Bough, English's companion
John Malkovich as Pascal Sauvage, a French prison owner and descendant of James II
Oliver Ford Davies as the Archbishop of Canterbury
Tim Pigott-Smith as Pegasus, the head of MI7
Kevin McNally as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Douglas McFerran as Klaus Vendetta, one of Sauvage's minions
Steve Nicolson as Dieter Klein, one of Sauvage's minions
Tasha de Vasconcelos as the Exotic Woman in English's daydream
Greg Wise as Agent One, MI7's top agent whose death English is unknowingly responsible for
Terence Harvey as the Funeral Officer at Agent One's funeral
Nina Young as Pegasus' Secretary
Rowland Davies as Sir Anthony Chevenix, Head of Royal Security
Philippa Fordham as the Snobby Woman, whom English harasses at the Tower of London ceremony
Prunella Scales as Queen Elizabeth II
Tim Berrington as Roger, an MI7 agent who helps discover the identity of the "assailant" at the Tower of London
Production
In March 2000, before the release of Maybe Baby, Atkinson signed up to star as a spoof 007.
In July 2002, Johnny English principal photography commenced. The film shot for fourteen weeks, filming at Shepperton Studios, on location in London and St. Albans, and finally setting down in Monte Carlo for two days to complete filming the final scene. In September 2002, it was announced that Natalie Imbruglia would star alongside Atkinson.
The character of Johnny English himself is based on a similar character called Richard Latham, who Atkinson played in a series of British television adverts for Barclaycard. The character of Bough (pronounced 'Boff') was retained from the adverts though another actor, Henry Naylor, played the part in the ads. Some of the gags from the adverts made it into the film, including English incorrectly identifying a waiter, and inadvertently shooting himself with a tranquilliser ballpoint pen, although he shot Pegasus' secretary with it in the movie.
Filming locations
Some scenes were filmed at Canary Wharf in London—indeed, the film duplicates the single real tower into two identical ones (albeit on the real site) for the fictional London Hospital and Sauvage's headquarters at 1 Canada Square.
The scenes set in Westminster Abbey were filmed in St. Albans Abbey: though this connection is solely implied through the dialogue—for this footage is never intercut with footage of the real abbey's exterior. The interior (with the televisual screen hiding the St Albans organ) is clearly St Albans. The choir singing in the coronation scene is St Albans Cathedral Choir.
Both the exteriors and interiors in the introductory dream sequence scene are in Mentmore Towers.
The exterior and interior of MI7's headquarters which English enters at the start is Freemasons' Hall, London, which is also used as Thames House (the MI5 headquarters) in Spooks.
The scenes where Johnny English drives into Dover, Kent along the A20 road (with Dover Castle in the background) and then enters the Port of Dover (with a "Dover Ferry Terminal" sign, Dover's Athol Terrace and the White Cliffs of Dover in the background) to catch a ferry to France, were all shot on location.
The exterior of Sauvage's French château is actually the castle atop St Michael's Mount in Cornwall.
The scenes in Brompton Cemetery were filmed there.
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 33% based on 120 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "A tame spy spoof that elicits infrequent chuckles." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 51 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Soundtrack
Edward Shearmur composed the film's score. For the film's main theme, Shearmur incorporated the six note jingle that was composed by Howard Goodall for the Barclaycard advertisements that spawned the film. Like the Bond films, it also features an original song, composed by Robbie Williams & Hans Zimmer and performed by Williams. The soundtrack also includes songs by Bond, Moloko and ABBA. It was released in the U.S on July 15, 2003
Home media
Johnny English was released on VHS on 11 August 2003 and on DVD on 11 January 2004. A DVD re-release, entitled Johnny English: Fully Loaded Edition, was released on 19 September 2011, including bonus material about its sequel Johnny English Reborn.
The film was released on Blu-ray on 28 February 2012, along with its sequel Johnny English Reborn. The film was released on Netflix in February 2016.
Sequels
A sequel, titled Johnny English Reborn, was released in October 2011. In September 2010, filming for the sequel began, seven years after the release of the original, and concluded in March 2011. The start of the film finds Johnny English in an Asian monastery after being disgraced in an earlier mission. He is then reinstated to foil a plot to assassinate the Chinese Premier, Xiang Ping, while a mole is found in "MI7" and English has to deal with being framed.
In May 2017, it was announced that pre-production had begun on a third film titled Johnny English Strikes Again, which was released on 5 October 2018.