Americans can be forgiven if they don’t remember the 2003 James Bond spoof “Johnny English’’ with British comic Rowan Atkinson, which collected the vast majority of its $160 million in worldwide grosses elsewhere — the only possible explanation for this belated and totally unnecessary sequel.
“Johnny English Reborn’’ sounds like a reboot, but it’s actually a tired recycling of something that wasn’t exactly fresh to begin with. It would seem to appeal mostly to hard-core fans of the “Mr. Bean’’ star and children who laugh at the sight of men being repeatedly kicked in the groin.
Though stretched out for what feels like three hours, the nonsensical plot could be inscribed on the head of a pin.
Exiled to a lamasery in Tibet after he failed to prevent an assassination there, disgraced former MI7 agent English is recalled to prevent a plot to kill the Chinese prime minister.
The now-graying Atkinson is a master of slapstick, but for me, at least, a little of his clowning — including a mistaken-identity gag that, like several others, gets beaten to death — goes a very long way.
He isn’t helped by the hamfisted direction of Oliver Parker, who was responsible for two of the most lamentable British films of recent years, “Saint Trinian’s’’ and the direct-to-DVD “Dorian Gray,’’ both starring Colin Firth.
Firth wisely sat this far more expensive-looking production out, allowing Parker to instead squander the talents of Gillian Anderson (as Johnny’s new boss as what’s now acquired corporate sponsorship as “Toshiba MI7’’) and erstwhile Bond girl Rosamund Pike as his very nominal love interest.
“Johnny English’’ concludes with an elaborate and endless sequence set at a Swiss mountaintop fortress where the left and right hands of our hero — one which is mind-controlled by rogue agent Dominic West — struggle for a gun. All I could think of was how much better Steve Martin handled the same gag in “All of Me.’’