'''Johnny English''' (
2003) is a comic
film parodying the
James Bond secret agent genre, starring
Rowan Atkinson as the incompetent
British spy of the title, with
John Malkovich,
Natalie Imbruglia and
Ben Miller.
The screenplay was written by Bond writers
Neal Purvis and
Robert Wade, with
William Davies and the film is directed by former ''
Bread'' actor
Peter Howitt.
Tag line: "He Knows No Fear. He Knows No Danger. He Knows Nothing."
Principal character's precursor
The character of Johnny English himself is based on a similar character called Richard Latham who was played by Atkinson in a series of British
television advertisements for
Barclaycard. The character of Bough (pronounced 'Boff') was retained from the advertisements though another actor,
Henry Naylor, played the part in the advertisements. Some of the gags from the advertisements made it into the film, including English incorrectly identifying a waiter, and the ballpoint pen scene (Latham inadvertently 'shot' himself with a tranquilizer dart which fired from the gadget pen when Latham attempted to use it during a demonstration to a class of spy recruits, saying as he collapsed "take over for a Bough will you moment").
Plot
An explosion at the funeral of Agent One, Britain's top agent, wipes out every secret agent in the country - except one. When a plot to steal the
Crown Jewels is revealed, Johnny English, an inept worker at
British Intelligence (whose bungling was partially responsible for not only the agents' death, but Agent One himself, after giving Agent One incorrect information about his mission) is summoned as a last resort. Together with his assistant Bough, he manages to discover the person behind the plot, the French prison entrepreneur Pascal Sauvage, whose family once had a claim to the throne.
Sauvage, believing that the crown should have gone to him instead of
the Queen, has hatched an evil plan to become King of the United Kingdom: steal the Crown Jewels, have an impostor replace the
Archbishop of Canterbury, and have him proclaim Sauvage as King. Meanwhile, English is strangely attracted to a mysterious woman, Lorna Campbell, whom he meets at a big social event whilst guarding the centrepiece to the whole event - the Crown Jewels. He inevitably fails, and the Jewels, despite a desperate attempt on his half to retrieve them, are stolen.
Meanwhile, English reports his suspicions to MI7, who naturally don't believe him. English and Bough infiltrate Sauvage's headquarters via parachute. English initially lands on the wrong building, the nearby and identical London Hospital, and after a phenomenal error of judgement resulting in him holding several doctors and patients at gunpoint, English enters the headquarters through a back door. Both agents activate a
DVD player, exposing Sauvage's sinister scheme. English, after accidentally injecting himself with muscle relaxant, meets Lorna again, who turns out to be a French Secret Service agent herself, also on Sauvage's tail. Along with Bough, they gatecrash a party held by Sauvage, and Bough and English are promptly dismissed by their superiors (partly due to one of the henchmen reporting English's antics to Sauvage, still a friend of English's unwitting boss, and partially due to the fact that the muscle relaxant's effects had not worn off completely, making English seem somewhat inebriated).
Sauvage concludes that English knows too much and has his henchmen enter
Sandringham House and force the Queen to sign a letter of abdication renouncing her family's claim to the British throne. The Queen, at first, refused to sign even if it means being shot dead with a
handgun, but when the threat was turned to one of her
corgis, she signs. Thus, leaving the post free for Sauvage. Sauvage is informed by British officials the day after that, as the closest surviving relative of the Queen, the position of monarch now belongs to him.
English returns to his flat and feels sorry for himself until Lorna comes and urges him to reconsider. They both travel to France and infiltrate Sauvage's chateau and overhear Sauvage's proposal of turning the United Kingdom into a giant prison once he is king. They decide to take the
DVD, but due to English dropping it on a tray full of identical unlabelled disks, take the wrong one - a surveillance video of English dancing to
ABBA in his bathroom. At Sauvage's coronation, English sneaks in with Lorna, emerges from his disguise as the Englis bishop in front of Sauvage and accuses him of treason. Oblivious to the fact that the idea of a fake Archbishop was scratched, English attempts to verify his claim by pulling the Archbishop's face off, believing it to be a mask. This fails predictably. Undeterred, he tries to expose the 'fake' Archbishop a second time. Whilst infiltrating Sauvage's headquarters earlier on in the film, when Sauvage's first plan was still in action, English spotted a
tattoo on the lower back of the original wearer of the Archbishop mask: ' ''Jesus is coming... look busy'' '. English grabs the Archbishop, turns him round and, in front of everyone at Westminster Abbey and the millions of viewers, bares the Archbishop's tattoo-free rear end. Upon realising that there is no tattoo there himself, English resorts to a final, last-ditch attempt. He radios to Bough to tell him to play the DVD they retrieved. Bough has the people running the event at gunpoint, and makes them play the DVD on the massive television screen in the Abbey, an act which results in half the world's population watching English, in a shower cap and underpants, dancing and miming along to 'Does your Mother Know', by
ABBA. English is subsequently taken away, but breaks free from Sauvage's cronies once again and, swinging from a wire above Sauvage and the Archbishop, grabs the crown before it touches Sauvage's head. While he is trying to prevent the Archbishop from crowning Sauvage king, he falls onto the throne, knocking Sauvage onto the floor, and is inadvertently crowned himself; he then places Sauvage under arrest, reveals the schemes to the public, and abdicates in favour of the Queen.
After a grateful thanking from the Queen, English is asked if there is anything she can do for him. He requests to be knighted. The film ends with a romantic scene in an Aston Martin with Johnny and Lorna cut short by English leaning on the ejector button, propelling Lorna airborne.
Sequel
Many Websites have rumored of a second Johnny English for quite some time. A second Johnny English film is currently being written, though no date has been set for release. Also the directors have told that the sequel will be funnier and better than the first.
[1]. Rowan Atkinson will take the role of Johnny English.
Trivia
★ Although in the film English carries a handgun, he never succeeds in firing it. Instead, the ammunition magazine falls out of the weapon (indicating that English has pressed the magazine release with his thumb, rather than pulling the trigger with his forefinger), the gun is empty, he drops it, or
feces comes out instead. Also, during the opening credits, he's shown putting together a pistol but after he finishes and tries to fire it, he realizes he didn't put in the trigger.
★ Natalie Imbruglia who played Lorna Campbell actually rode the
Triumph Speed Triple for some of the slower scenes while a stunt double was used for the chase sequences.
★ English fails in all his attempts to kiss a girl.
★ The movie grossed $158,919,243 internationally.
[2]
★ The party scene features a real-life string quartet called
bond.
★ Atkinson starred in an unofficial James Bond film in 1983, ''
Never Say Never Again''.
★ The song that English sings along to in his bathroom is "
Does Your Mother Know", and the song that he uses for the "sonic chanting" is "
Thank You For The Music", both by
ABBA.
★ The opening theme song is 'A Man For All Seasons' by
Robbie Williams.
★ The denial of Sauvage's family's claim to the throne references the
Jacobite succession. This is never mentioned explicitly (since the Jacobite line still bears real-life descendents), though Sauvage has a portrait of
Bonny Prince Charlie in his office, and the Jacobite family (eg
the Old Pretender) lived for a time in France before and after their failed invasions of England in the 18th century.
★ The total depopulating of the UK comically suggested here parallels that of
Diego Garcia.
★ That Sauvage will be "England's first French king since 1066" (ie since
William the Conqueror) as stated in Tarrant's radio broadcast is inaccurate - William was Norman-French not straight French.
★ The suit Johnny English wears before he becomes agent one is extremely similar to the suit Atkinson wore in Mr. Bean
★ Bough is apparently fluent in three languages - English, French, and
C++.
Parody elements
★ Agent One's throwing his coat onto the hatstand (and English's failed attempt to imitate it) is in imitation of James Bond's throwing his hat onto the hatstand.
★ The car chase with the car in grapples is a parody of more conventional car chases in Bond films.
★ Bough is a pun on "boff", an English truncation of "
boffin". This, presumably, refers to Atkinson's
Barclaycard television advertisements of the early- to mid-1990s, where he was accompanied by a comically wise, barclaycard-using
sidekick of the same name.
★ English's organization is called
MI7, a parody of
MI5 and
MI6. MI7 ''did'' exist, but in a different form. The head of MI7 here is named
Pegasus.
Factual inaccuracies
★ The news broadcast at the end of the film claims that
high treason still carries the
death penalty. In fact, since the coming into force of the
Human Rights Act 1998 in 2000, the United Kingdom abolished capital punishment completely.
★ Sauvage's face is seen being printed onto stamps and paper money, though this seems an unlikely compression of usual time if his coronation is happening less than a week after the Queen's abdication. The issuing of commemorative stamps in this short time, however, is more realistic.
★ Trevor McDonald's broadcast states that the identity of the agent who saved the Queen is being kept secret, whereas a copy of
The Times being read in the post-credits sequence shows English's name and face - the latter is more likely, though the two are not entirely incompatible.
★ In real life the British Monarch cannot be forced to abdicate, this requires an act of Parliament.
Coronation
★ The need for the
Archbishop of Canterbury in a
coronation is true, though the need for a bishop for each of England, Wales and Scotland is inaccurate.
★ It seems unlikely that Pegasus (a top-secret role) would sit in the front row with the Prime Minister.
★ The use of the music
Zadok the Priest, and some of the coronation service text, are correct.
★ The footage of
Concorde and the
Red Arrows is documentary footage either from Concorde's anniversary, or from a royal jubilee.
★ The date given for the coronation is Thursday
5 August.
Elizabeth II
★ The letter of abdication given to the Queen gives her title as ''"Elizabeth the second, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British dominions...."'' The Queen is monarch of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and ''Northern Ireland''. The
Republic of Ireland is now a separate sovereign state, the head of state of which is the
President of Ireland. The Queen's full title is actually ''"By the Grace of God, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith"''.
★ During the film, the Queen's face is never shown. She is always shown from behind, except for once when she signs the letter of abdication, but we only see her hand.
★ The conferring of a knighthood, even in exceptional circumstances such as this, would usually occur in the birthday or new year
honours list rather than immediately afterwards.
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.
★ 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 exteriors in the first credits sequence scene is
Burghley House or
Hardwick Hall.
★ 'Sandringham' is
Hughenden Manor.
[3]
★ 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.
Soundtrack
#"A Man For All Seasons" -
Robbie Williams
#Theme from Johnny English
#Russian Affairs
#A Man of Sophistication
#"Kismet" -
bond
#Truck Chase
#"The Only Ones" -
Moloko
#Parachute Drop
#Pascal's Evil Plan
#"Theme from Johnny English (Salsa Version)" -
bond
#Off the Case
#Cafe Conversation
#Into Pascal's Lair
#"
Does Your Mother Know" -
ABBA
#For England
#Riviera Hideaway
#Agent No. 1
External links
★
Official website
★
★
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