I know Rowan Atkinson only as Mr. Pollini, the narcoleptic Italian tourist in “Rat Race”. Others probably know him as “Mr. Bean” — when you look at his past credits on the Internet Movie Data Base, you find a whole column of “Bean … Bean … Bean … Bean …” Sorry, I haven’t seen any of them. I rawther wish I had.

Here, Atkinson is Johnny English, a minor functionary for British Intelligence (MI7?) who wants to be a single-digit secret agent with a license to kill, maim, fold, spindle and mutilate. He daydreams of this at the start of the movie (see how he defeats a brace of cold-blooded, murderous guard dogs), but is quickly recalled to reality by secret agent 1, who is off on a mission.

However, within a couple of scenes MI7’s entire stable of agents (including the double and triple digit ones, apparently) has been destroyed, and only English, and his faithful (and infinitely more competent) subordinate Bough (Ben Miller; pr. “buff”), with the help of pulchritudinous Interpol agent Lorna Campbell (Natalie Imbruglia), are left to save England from the evil machinations of evil French machinator Pascal Sauvage (John Malkovich; no relation to James D. Savage, Anne) who aims to become King of Britain and turn the island into one gigantic for-profit prison.

The running joke is, of course, English’s total incompetence, which leads to, for instance, an attempt to arrest a totally innocent and uncomprehending burial party, an attempt to arrest an entire hospital, a climb up a long tube leading down from a French castle where Sauvage is ensconced (it turns out to lead down from a ten-holer which is in full use at the time), and forcing the Archbishop of Canterbury to moon the audience during Sauvage’s coronation. The jokes are very heavy (reminiscent, in my mind, of the Stooges), but there were parts at which I couldn’t stop laughing.