Review by Michael Wyzard

View The Trailer For Johnny English

View The Trailer For Agent Cody Banks

Ever since Goldeneye revived the hip status of everyone's favorite secret agent from its Timothy Dalton-era deep-freeze, the James Bond franchise has been gaining steam with calculated precision. Its success, by the laws of Hollywood, naturally prompted a veritable crap cornucopia of cash-ins with minimal variations on the "rich guy does hot women and crazy stunts without mussing up hair" theme. Last year there were at least three Bond-derived movies out (xXx, I Spy, The Tuxedo), each trying to do their mimeographed thing to varying success.

Finally, however, there are two trailers that have the temerity, the bravery, the—dare I say it—sheer panache, to show two more attempts at the exact same thing. I'm guessing they won't quite hit the box office heights of xXx. xXx, by the logical reasoning of any sane sociologist, should'nt have hit the box office heights of xXx. So I have no reason to suspect why the two latest additions to the direct-to-video crap-pile, Johnny English or Agent Cody Banks—with nary a bald-headed nasal-voiced slab of man-loin to be seen—would fare better.

The Johnny English teaser trailer is short, so I'll keep the review likewise. Rowan Atkinson (who Bond buffs will recognize as 1983's Never Say Never Again's inept and delightfully named Nigel Small-Faucet) is still just barely on the cultural radar. The powers that be have, to their credit, at least figured out we don't want any more Mr. Bean movies. The bad news is that they still don't know he's a really great talent, as proven in such fine British TV comedies as The Thin Blue Line and the three Black Adder series. His recent movie career hasn't really lived up to that promise, as he keeps showing up as one-dimensional stereotypes in movies like Rat Race, which was a horrible film (I don't put this forward as opinion; science recently classified it as cinema horribilus).

In Johnny English we get Atkinson as essentially a British Maxwell Smart with some extra clumsiness thrown in for good measure. As a proud American, I worry for this great nation when we have to be reminded to laugh at the English. The trailer's selections of his inteptitude do nothing for me; the only thing that keeps me mildly interested in seeing this movie is the mention at IMDB.com that John Malkovich will be playing "Pascal Sauvage." Gee, I wonder if he's a villain. I suppose so, because the name sounds French. It also promises that pop star Natalie Imbruglia will have a role, showing that she's smart enough to realize that, if she's to make any money in entertainment, it certainly won't be in the music industry.

The Agent Cody Banks trailer has got a nicely deceptive opening, showing several clips of the main character in action, but short enough so as to not reveal him as the awkward teen he really is! At least, it's deceptive if you see this in the theater; I'm sure it didn't faze the losers like me who bothered to actually click on the link saying "Agent Cody Banks" because we watch these things at work when we should be.. well, you know, working. Sorry if that sentence drifted, I had a Solitare game to finish up.

But then, we all should know that it's about a kid anyway, right? That's because our hero's named "Cody," a name that I can't recall ever being affixed to any adult who's not an athlete (and they're all just kids, anyway). Cody is a name that fat stupid women name their children, and it always saddens the restof the population to see it in practice. I wonder what happens to guys named Cody? Do they start using the full version of that name, Codialivicious, and then die of shame because of it? Or is Cody, like Jack, yet another shortened version of Jonathan? I admit, I don't want to know.

I digress. After a cleavage shot (a subtle and time-honored Hollywood device to show that a woman is present in the film) we see the titular character being not at all watchable. We soon discover our hero's weakness: he can't talk to women. This is revealed with another subtle and time-honored Hollywood device: a shouting and upset black authority figure, who says, "This is the CIA... we spent $10 million training this kid... and we DID NOT TEACH HIM HOW TO TALK TO WOMEN???" Well, no, sir. The CIA doesn't actually sponsor dating techniques as part of its training program.

The rest of the trailer is a fast montage with heavy metal playing and shots of him flying around in CGI-infected scenes, beating people up, walking on the ceiling, saving the damsel in distress, and even saying "Banks... Cody Banks." It's something that is to be expected, as the fact that this is a "secret agent movie" already tells the audience that "saves the world" and "gets the girl" are going to be part of the plot, so why bother going over it in the trailer? We get to see the main thrust of this movie, which is sticking an awkward teen in James Bond shoes. That'll draw some folks to the audience. Others of us will come wanting to find out how they explain the CIA training kids, using great technology, and still being so inept that I've been told to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheets in case of a terrorist attack.