In spite of Rowan Atkinson’s great talent, he makes few films. By the time the legendary, infinitely quotable Blackadder ended in 1989, Atkinson had perhaps earned the right to rest on his laurels.  In the two decades since, he has appeared sporadically (and often briefly, in a supporting role) in moderately successful films such as Love Actually and Rat Race.

The current instalment opens in a Tibetan monastery in the Himalayas (of course), where a disgraced English is lying low. It's been five years since a disastrous “cock-up” in Mozambique, but everyone knows he is still MI7’s greatest asset. He is brought back into the fold by Pamela Thornton (The X-Files’ Gillian Anderson) to determine who is behind the plot to kill the Chinese premier, Zhang Ping. In a parallel with the recent and infinitely more sophisticated Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, one of the assassins just might be part of MI7.

A reliance on physical comedy puts the former Mr Bean to good use, with the jokes mostly slapstick, involving testicles and bums. The tone is lowered further by Simon Ambrose (Dominic West) telling a waitress he’ll have her for dessert. The plot is predictable, the men crass and the women mere bits of skirt, but you’ll definitely laugh. It is, after all, a send-up of Ian Fleming’s James Bond franchise and the one-dimensional stock characters which populate it. Reborn has fewer scenes of true comedy than the first film, but sequels are inevitably pale images of the original. The lack of a prominent villain does the film no favours. Why spread the evil around when you can concentrate it all on one eccentric figure?

This certainly won’t appeal to your intellectual sensibilities, but you will leave the theatre in a much better mood than when you went in.