Rowan Atkinson's chances of playing 007 are right up there with Saddam Hussein's. The closest he's got to date was in "Never Say Never Again", and even then the only action he saw was being thrown in a swimming pool by Sean Connery.
So it was probably a wise move to come up with his own spy character: Johnny English, a blundering secret agent who does more damage to Her Majesty's Secret Service than SPECTRE ever could.
Part Mr Bean, part Inspector Clouseau, Rowan's latest creation is an enthusiastic but bumbling desk-jockey thrust into the limelight when the rest of Britain's intelligence personnel are assassinated.
His first mission is to recover the Crown Jewels, which have been stolen as part of a fiendish plot cooked up by evil magnate Pascal Sauvage (John Malkovich sporting an ill-advised French accent).
Unfortunately, everything Johnny touches goes pear-shaped - much to the bemusement of long-suffering assistant Bough (Ben Miller).
If English looks familiar, that's because he originally appeared in a series of adverts for a well-known credit card. Indeed, Peter Howitt's caper pays unwitting homage to the character's origins with some odious product placement for a certain chain of sushi restaurants.
Otherwise, though, this is a likeable parody that, while never quite as side-splitting as it thinks it is, still contains a good number of well-worked comic set-pieces.
And when the jokes pall, there's always Natalie Imbruglia as Atkinson's love interest. She can't act for toffee but when you're this gorgeous, who cares?
Johnny English (2003)
