The bumbling secret agent, Johnny English, was born from a series of hugely-popular television commercials in the ‘90s, which showed an MI7 agent, Richard Latham, (Rowan Atkinson) getting into all kinds of muddles as he did not have a Barclaycard.
Johnny English (2003) built on the premise of Atkinson’s Mr Bean becoming a secret agent.
The movie, directed by Peter Howitt and scripted by Bond movie writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, was goofy fun, involving a teeth-gnashing turn by John Malkovich as Pascal Edward Sauvage. The sequel, Johnny English Reborn (2011), saw English crossing swords with a rogue agent Simon Ambrose (Dominic West).
In English’s third silver screen outing, Johnny English Strikes Again out on September 28, he fights a cyber-criminal with decidedly analogue gadgets such as a shoebox inflatable boat, magnetic boots and an Aston Martin with built-in rockets and gas dispenser.
Atkinson incidentally acted in the unofficial James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983), where he plays Nigel Small-Fawcett from the Foreign Office.
Laugh out loud
Spoofs of James Bond movies have been around almost as long as the suave super spy. Casino Royale, not the adrenalin-fuelled Daniel Craig one in 2006, was released in 1967, two months before the fifth official Bond movie, You Only Live Twice.
The movie has five directors listed in the credits, including Ken Hughes and John Huston. The star-studded film, with Bond girl Ursula Andress, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen and Orson Welles, is like a weird and wonderful dream marching on its own trip. There are some genuinely funny bits like David Niven as the retired Sir James Bond sniffily dismissing his namesake as a bounder and Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen) telling the firing squad, ‘I have a very low threshold of death’ and ‘this means an angry letter to The Times’.
The movie, loosely based on the eponymous Ian Fleming novel, follows the efforts to defeat Le Chiffre (Welles) at baccarat. In order to confuse the opposition, all the agents are called James Bond, from Vesper Lynd (Andress) to baccarat master Evelyn Tremble (Sellers).
- While working for Britain’s Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Ian Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and overseeing two intelligence units, 30 Assault Unit and T-Force.
The film, with its psychedelic look and feel and celebrity cameos (Deborah Kerr, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jacqueline Bisset among others), was the forerunner to the hairy-chested, tombstone-toothed Austin Powers. Even the spectacles seem a throwback to Casino Royale, where Tremble and Jimmy Bond wear glasses.
Spy vs spy
Directed by Jay Roach, the three movies, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) involve Powers (Mike Myers), a cryogenically frozen British secret agent from the Sixties being brought into the 90s to fight Dr Evil (Myers again), also frozen in the 60s.
Myers, a huge fan of James Bond, Peter Sellers and Casino Royale, has included all manner of Bond-isms, from megalomaniac villains with involved lairs to naughtily-named ladies. Incidentally, Bisset is called Miss Goodthighs in Casino Royale.
The spoof kings, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, wrote and directed Top Secret! (1984). Val Kilmer made his début in the film, which had some elements of a James Bond film, notably Omar Sharif getting crushed in a car, bringing to mind Goldfinger (1964).
There was the underwhelming Spy Hard (1996), where Leslie Nielsen plays Agent Dick Steele (har! har!). The only thing that worked was the title sequence with Weird Al Yankovic singing the ‘Spy Hard’ theme and ‘Laung Gawacha’ playing in a car. Get Smart (2008) with Steve Carell was the film version of Mel Brooks’ 1965 television spy comedy.
Time to tango
Then there’s James Cameron’s True Lies (1994), where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Harry Tasker, a brilliant secret agent, whose family believes he is a boring sales executive. While the action-comedy has drawn flak for its racial stereotyping and misogynistic overtones, Art Malik’s ‘battery Aziz’ is just too funny.
And while on action-comedies, Matthew Vaughn’s comic book-inspired Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), and its sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), featured the suits, gadgets, quarter master and villains. While the films also addressed the boundaries of class and privilege, the cartoonish violence from exploding heads to mystery meat in Poppy Adams’ burgers did not go very well with the popcorn.
And as every bit of news about James Bond 25 — Danny Boyle quits! Cary Fukunaga hired! is breathlessly being followed, we could chill with English and Austin. Groovy baby!