Ntuple Indemnity

Rowan Atkinson’s performance as the title character of Johnny English is among his better work. The film itself is not.

There is no doubting that the former Mr. Bean is a gentleman’s Jim Carrey, a master of physical comedy, and it shows as he plays the role of a bumbling, incompetent secret agent. Atkinson is the primary draw of the film and its solitary heart and soul; true to form, he delivers fine comedy that acts as a magnet for laughter. He plays the role with a total lack of debonair suavity, and proves himself the perfect anti-Bond. His delivery of verbal humour is similarly commendable, and hearkens back to its Blackadder zenith.

Unfortunately, that is where Johnny English starts and ends. It is in effect a solo performance, or maybe not enough of one, as everything other than Atkinson’s comedic moments is completely forgettable. The screenwriting team of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the pair who worked on the last two James Bond films, does well enough in constructing the occasional witty snippet of dialogue for Atkinson to deliver, typically relying heavily on well-executed dramatic irony; however, not as much can be said in the way of story. One does not expect a showcase of Atkinson’s talents to string an evenly-paced plot together, but low expectations do not excuse the paper-thin transitions from joke to joke, which often go on far too long. Whenever Johnny English is offscreen, the movie is a thundering bore. Even John Malkovich’s appearance as the uber-Frenchman Pascal Sauvage, over-the-top accent included, is a gag that gets very old very fast.

Most of the blame can be laid directly on director Peter Howitt, whose impressive curriculum vitae features such highlights as AntiTrust and Sliding Doors. What Johnny English lacks is a sense of style, an atmosphere of pulpish cool – elements critical to what it aspired to be. The movie almost never feels like a spy flick; we are only led to believe it is because we are told. In addition to being funny, a comedy movie – especially one of a spoofy nature – still carries the responsibility of being a movie. English is one of the many films that neglect this requirement, and does so much to its own discredit. There is very little that separates it from merely being television fare.

The moral of the story is that Atkinson alone is not enough to sustain an hour and a half on the big screen, let alone the ticket price. Actually, theoretically he is – but Johnny English is such a mishmash of clearly identifiable good parts (with him) and bad parts (without), you really couldn’t tell. English is enjoyable, but only in bursts, and it never comes close to demanding silver-screen presentation as a necessity. We learn nothing new about Atkinson as a performer, and there is far too much extraneous material that gets in his way. Until someone knows how to make use of him as the star of a feature film, his television work, with its thankful brevity and superior knack for timing, will suffice. He is an actor best described as silly and fun, but more often than not, this movie is silly and stupid.

Director Stephen Norrington must be truly extraordinary: somehow he has managed to make The Pagemaster look like a tour de force of literary studies.

A more appropriate title for Norrington’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be Cliff Notes: The Movie, though that hardly does justice to the film’s absurd superhuman ability to take characters out of eighteenth-century literature remembered for the complexity of their tales, and water them down to one-note, one-joke self-parodying caricatures that are more like Pokémon than people. We see Allan Quartermain as the poster-headlining retired adventurer, played by Sean Connery in his best what-kind-of-lines-are-these look. The Invisible Man (Tony Curran) is invisible. Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend) is somehow immortal by way of the peculiarity with his portrait. Dr. Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) is the brute strength of the team when in his egregiously outfitted Mr. Hyde form. A certain Special Agent Tom Sawyer (Shane West) inexplicably shows up from America and delivers “witty” wisecracks about the British. When you begin to describe characters by a single trait or ability as if they were merely weapons, you know there’s a problem.

Conceptually, the idea of uniting iconic literary characters and making use of their special powers – the novelty behind the comic book on which this film is based – is something with great cinematic potential. It would ideally play out like a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure of fiction rather than history, only serious and bullet-ridden. The problem is that James Dale Robinson’s flaccid screenplay acknowledges that the heroes of the piece are pre-established, and uses this as an excuse for forgoing any degree of coherent exposition.

But it was never intended to be anything more than a thrilling adventure movie, right? At least we could expect it to deliver on its promises to be high-octane visceral escapism? Nope. The League wants to be campy fun at every turn, but ends up as merely campy. The fight sequences are for the most part choppily edited; one early conflict switches characters and fights every second, moving from close-up to close-up, lacking any degree of continuity. The way these battles were staged, they must have looked really good live on set; however, they are muffled by poor editorial choices rather than amplified, as they should be.

A similar complaint can be made of the overall look of the film. Given The League‘s comic book roots, the Batman-esque gothic darkness of the sets and costumes is one of its high points. The way the production looks on the screen, however, is a different story. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen seems to misunderstand that the effect of darkness is most expressed with the contrast between light and shadow, and goes solely for the shadow. I suppose this is in line with the movie’s apparent philosophy that the audience should not have any idea what is going on, but this only highlights (pardon the pun) Conrad L. Hall’s superior work in Road to Perdition as the textbook on how to light a dark graphic novel adaptation. Granted, comparing Laustsen’s work in The League to Hall’s pedigree is akin to juxtaposing crab apples and Florida oranges, but that does not change the fact that the commendable design values go to waste.

With more coherent editing and smarter photography, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen could have been great, despite a horrendous screenplay. Add a better script and it could be marvelous, though it would be a completely different movie – namely, a watchable one. It has a lot going for it: the production design, a talented cast that does what it can, and most of all, the concept. There are even some very cinematic moments in the film, the briefest flashes of brilliance, as in a pivotal scene when our heroes listen to a staticky recorded message from the villain, which is shot like a grainy vintage reel. The unveiling of the movie’s Standard Diabolical Plan is the best-edited montage of the entire piece; it is a pity that the rest of the movie never comes close to that level of achievement.

For The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the nail in the coffin is that it is not even a whole lot of fun. It’s a bad movie, but not quite farcical enough in its badness to merit watching in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 way, or disastrous enough to leave permanent and visible scars to show your friends afterwards, à la 1998’s The Avengers. It fails because it is the worst kind of disappointment: one with tremendous promise. Even the League of Nations was a greater success.

I walked into Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl expecting to criticize it mercilessly for the omission of the classic “Yo ho, yo ho / A pirate’s life for me” drinking song from the Disney theme park attraction on which it is based. The film not only opens with a lovely and subtle rendition of said song, but proceeds to make the right cinematic choices from that point onwards.

Pirates can hardly be faulted for being such a direct stab at being a definitive portrayal of the swashbuckling high-seas adventure archetype that it ventures into the realm of caricature. The reason for excusing its nature as a formula flick is that for all its cartoonish glory, it is remarkably well-drawn. It is a visually stylish period film, exuberantly designed in much the same manner as the ride that is its source, and colourfully photographed under daylight and moonlight to produce an immersive atmosphere and later serve as a plot device.

The content of the film itself is more like a two-hour version of the Treasure Island stunt spectacular in Las Vegas than anything, full of clanging swords and cannon fire, swinging from ropes and ladders, and bursting with all of the traditional pirate-story elements: the damsel in distress walking the plank, the climactic naval battle with Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, the rum-drenched pirate shanty town, the irresistible treasure chest that turns out to be the Aztec equivalent of Pandora’s Box. Pirates unashamedly aims for cliché, but does such a good job in the presentation that its well-established roots should hardly preclude one from enjoying it.

It is hardly all style and no substance, either. The lifeblood of the movie is pumped by the four lead characters, each with a fierce personality. Johnny Depp boards the movie and steals it as Captain Jack Sparrow, a clever and enigmatic bandito who can unquestionably be elevated to the ranks of the great adventure movie characters. This is the standout performance of this summer’s crop of mainstream action flicks. Orlando Bloom, at his current pace, seems to be on course to becoming recognized as the closest thing this generation has to an Errol Flynn. In his role as the pirate-hating poor-boy blacksmith who naturally has an affinity with the high-born governor’s daughter, he does tend to enunciate everything in the same intense and worried tone in such a manner that is almost irritating, but it suits the character. Keira Knightley has a convincing level of spunk in portraying the aforementioned high-born governor’s daughter Elizabeth Swann; Geoffrey Rush plays a villain who truly shines in his scenes with Sparrow, pun entirely intended.

And speaking of that shining, mention must be made of the movie’s token visual gimmick, the undead pirates morphing into skeletal form under moonlight. The transitions in and out of this mode are completely seamless, and the skeletons’ movements are so human as to be a fully integrated part of the visual experience instead of sticking out as an effect. This is the capitulation of everything for which Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy aimed, a corporeal bridge between life and death that characters cross on command.

However, Pirates is hardly perfect, though perfection should not be expected in the first place. The plot begins to wander near the end and stretch the running time a bit long, with back-and-forth kidnappings and raids that border on redundancy. There are a few decidedly campy moments, although they are apparently intentional, given how the abundance of conceptual clichés is largely responsible. Some of the comedy is considerably better-written than the rest; the very British banter between two of the guards works, whilst chasing eyeballs down slippery surfaces was already done in Minority Report, and better. But what ultimately saves the film from being thin, in addition to its energetic cast, is that it is never overtly stupid.

What is most commendable about Pirates of the Caribbean is that as a successful translation of a Disneyland boat ride into a fun adventure movie that plays in the same key as Martin Campbell’s The Mask of Zorro, it leads to some admirable implications. Perhaps it is only a matter of time before somebody in Hollywood figures out how to make a tolerable movie of this sort out of a video game, for instance. The real curse has nothing to do with black pearls, but franchise-motivated adaptations; we should applaud Pirates of the Caribbean for breaking it.