YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE - DON'T WASTE TIME ON 'ENGLISH'.Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic A LITTLE of Rowan Atkinson Rowan Sebastian Atkinson (born 6 January 1955) is an English comedian, actor and writer, famous for his title roles in the British television comedies Blackadder and Mr. Bean. goes a long way. This is one of life's great truths, never to be debated, never to be violated. Put him in a movie like ``Four Weddings and a Funeral,'' let him do the stuttering stuttering or stammering, speech disorder marked by hesitation and inability to enunciate consonants without spasmodic repetition. Known technically as dysphemia, it has sometimes been attributed to an underlying personality disorder. , bug-eyed thing he does for a couple of minutes and then put him in a car, drive him to the state line and leave him there, not to be heard from again. Give him a starring vehicle like the impossibly awful ``Johnny English'' and you can put me in a car and I'll drive anywhere - over a cliff, if necessary - to escape having to watch this stiff for an hour and a half. Tell me why Atkinson is funny again. Please. As far as I can tell, he has three comic moves, all of which grate heavily on even the hardiest psyche after even one viewing. He likes to make funny sounds, speaking gibberish like a baby discovering his voice for the first time. He likes to sputter words, not charmingly like countryman Hugh Grant, but annoyingly like a woodpecker woodpecker, common name for members of the Picidae, a large family of climbing birds found in most parts of the world. Woodpeckers typically have sharp, chisellike bills for pecking holes in tree trunks, and long, barbed, extensible tongues with which they impale tapping on your cranium cranium: see skull. . And he likes to pop those eyes out, expressing some kind of bewildered amazement that I can only guess comes from living in a constant state of confusion over why people find him amusing. He trots out these three moves ad nauseam ad nau·se·am adv. To a disgusting or ridiculous degree; to the point of nausea. [Latin ad, to + nauseam, accusative of nausea, sickness. over the course of ``Johnny English,'' a spy spoof that makes you pine for the days of Leslie Nielsen and ``Spy Hard.'' Atkinson plays the title character, a delusional British secret agent who believes he's Bond, but, under the gun, behaves like Benny Hill Noun 1. Benny Hill - risque English comedian (1925-1992) Alfred Hawthorne, Hill . English misreads every situation, producing a tiresome series of mistaken identity gags that wouldn't pass muster on the lamest television sitcom. Collecting paychecks are John Malkovich, criminally underused as a French fop that only Donald Rumsfeld would find funny, and pop singer Natalie Imbruglia, playing a sexy spy who wants to do things to English that involve ``plastic toys and soft cheese.'' Did I mention that this is intended as a kids' movie? Does that explain the film's huge action set piece, in which Atkinson crawls through a sewer line, only to have a dozen flatulent flatulent characterized by flatulence; distended with gas. Brits defecate def·e·cate v. To void feces from the bowels. def  e·ca tion n. all over his white tuxedo jacket? I suppose it does. Atkinson - perhaps sensitive that his movie is based on a series of credit card commercials he made in England, perhaps aware that his movie is unnecessary in the wake of ``Austin Powers,'' ``Spy Kids'' and countless other 007 spoofs - differentiates ``Johnny English'' from the ``Powers'' series. `` 'Austin Powers' is a spoof, we are lightly parodic,'' he explains. Let us further contrast: Mike Myers is funny; Rowan Atkinson is not. Glenn Whipp, (818) 713-3672 glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com JOHNNY ENGLISH - One star (PG: quite a bit of crude humor, comic nudity, language) Starring: Rowan Atkinson, John Malkovich, Natalie Imbruglia. Director: Peter Howitt. Running time: 1 hr. 26 min. Playing: In wide release. In a nutshell: Will the last person in the room who finds Rowan Atkinson funny, please turn out the lights. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: John Malkovich, left, plays the requisite evil criminal mastermind trying to get the best of to gain an advantage over, whether fairly or unfairly. - Milton. See also: Best British secret agents Rowan Atkinson and Natalie Imbruglia in ``Johnny English.'' |
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