Somewhere on a back shelf of the video store, there's a spot reserved for Johnny English. It'll be a find that viewers who enjoy taking risks in their video selection will stumble across, and expecting nothing, will feel richly rewarded. On the big screen, however, Johnny English doesn't quite have the chops to amount to much more than a bit of fun.

Rowan Atkinson is Johnny English, a bumbling MI7 agent who is dopier than a plank of wood. It's a comfortable role for Atkinson, who's various bumblings as Mr. Bean have given him able training at demonstrating he's a klutz. But where Bean is mean, Johnny English is just dopey.

He's a legend in his own mind, a right proper James Bond, as we see in his daydreams during the opening credits. In reality, his life is far from glamorous. Johnny English spends his days behind a desk, doing legwork for the real agents. And doing it badly. Which is par for the course for English, who does everything badly.

When all the other agents are killed, English gets to fulfil his dreams, becoming #1. And never was there a person less worthy of the task. English is really useless. He's appointed to protect the newly cleaned crown jewels. The villain de jour is John Malkovich as a French eccentric who desires to become King of England and hatches a plan to make it so.

So, we got the good guy and the bad guy, all we need is the girl. She's Natalie Imbruglia as Lorna Campbell. There's some pretense that she is there other than to make up the numbers, but she's not.

In fact, the whole movie is little more than an opportunity for the delightful Atkinson to strut his stuff. And he does it well. His face is less rubbery than as Bean, but he's still incredibly amusing, almost wincingly so.

Johnny English gets himself into many an ugly scrape, many of which are set up so obviously that the audience has time to groan in anticipation. For all Atkinson's agility as a comic, the movie struggles. You know things are bad when comedies resort to bathroom humor.


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