The supporting cast shines with self-parody and absurdity. He does overreach: Fat Bastard (utilising the comedian's beloved Scottish accent) is patently unfunny, a gross-out gag without mileage, but Myers, who co-writes (with Michael McCullers) and produces, is shaping up to be as good a shapeshifter as Peter Cook, Sellars, or the Monty Python heroes of his Anglicised youth.īut it's no solo show. There's a touching sensitivity to his plaintive cries for understanding: "Throw me a frickin' bone here people!" He seems constantly caught out of time (mostly literally), unable to gauge inflation rates, trapped forever within the precepts of being a classic 60s spy movie villain despite the protestations of his modish love child Scott Evil (Seth Green): "If you've got a time machine, why don't you just go back and kill Austin Powers when he's sitting on the crapper or something?"Īll of this explores a Sellers-like ability to lose himself in a character - we are never caught watching Mike Myers play a role (as we would Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin or Will Smith), this is Austin Powers, this is Dr. Myers seems to have more room to stretch the pastiche here - he's Blofeld crossed with Woody Allen, the world's only camp, existential despot. Evil is one of the great modern comic creations. And given his Mojo (sex drive) has been stolen by his time-travelling nemesis in 1969, this is an ail-too frequent distress. The naturally warm Myers adds a lovely self-effacing spirit, with moments of poignant disappointment when the world proves not as "shagadelic" as it should. Powers, himself, is the perfect alter-ego for any shy comedian: loud, sexually confident, charming and, above all, funny. "The movie isn't about the 60s," said Myers, "it's about straight culture's view of the 60s." And while obsessed with sex, the film is more randy than lewd, draped in an inoffensive silliness and Heather Graham's miraculous hot pants. Strangelove and Antonioni's Blow-Up are covered in a lavish, day-glo lovesong to 60s tastelessness. The touchstones are more than just the immediate Bond parody, everything from Matt Helm to A Hard Day's Night to In Like Flint to Dr. Evil on Jerry Springer) is heightened with director Roach's growing confidence. Its melding of puerile schoolboy naughtiness (Powers imbibes from a jar of steaming stool sample) with smarty-pants cultural referencing (we get Dr. The modestly successful International Man Of Mystery had found a new lease of life on video and the marketing of Part II cracked it. In America alone it quadrupled the gross of its original, completely demolishing the sequels' law of diminishing returns. The second adventure of the groovetastic spy was a watershed film in box office terms. Star Wars! If you're going to see two, see Austin Powers." Self-deprecating, culturally aware, damn funny. The gag has already landed, but Myers gives it an extra gear as the voice over then declares: "If you're going to see one movie this summer, see. Evil! "Expecting someone else?" he sneers, pinky to lip. At last we reach the back of a futuristic throne, it spins round to reveal. There's a long drawn out zoom up a forbidding looking spaceship as a voice-over warns of the return of an ancient evil empire. Take the first teaser trailer for The Spy Who Shagged Me (a better title than it first appears), released at the height of the Phantom Menace summer.
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