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Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
1999 - PG-13 - 95 Mins.
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| Director: Jay Roach | | Producer: Demi Moore, Jennifer Todd, Suzanne Todd, John Lyons, Mike Myers | | Written By: Mike Myers, Michael McCullers, Mike McCullers | | Starring: Mike Myers, Heather Graham, Seth Green, Robert Wagner, Mindy Sterling, Michael York, Verne J. Troyer, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Hurley, Rob Lowe |
| Review by: John Ulmer |
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"Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" is light-hearted entertainment which supplied me with a ton of laughs, no matter how crude they were.
Mike Myers returns to his role of Austin Powers in this sequel, as well as playing Dr. Evil, and a new character, Fat Bastar#.
Austin Powers has since settled down with new wife Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley) since the first film, and is quite happy. Until he finds out his wife is a homicidal fembot of a bride bent on destroying him. After the Vanessa Fembot blows up, Austin immediately forgets about her and goes out for a photo shoot.
But what Austin doesn't know is that Dr. Evil has a new plan - to steal Austin Powers' mojo! Evil (along with a clone 1/6 his size - played by Verne J. Troyer) has sent Fat Bastar# back to the sixties to steal Powers' mojo while he is cryogenically frozen. Without his mojo, Powers is nothing. So 90's Austin travels back to the 1960's to claim back his mojo - along with Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham) - from a time-traveling Dr. Evil.
This sequel is a lot different than the first film. The first seemed to be more of a spoof on the spy/James Bond genre. This movie, however, runs a bit more on Powers and his mojo - not a whole lot of Bond spoofs here. But that doesn't mean the jokes aren't any good.
Dr. Evil has much more screen time in this sequel, and I'm happy for that. Dr. Evil is a character we didn't see a whole lot of in the original, and in this film, he has just as much - if not more - screen time than Powers himself (it sounds weird referring to them as different actors - they're both Myers!).
Mike Myers is just as funny as he was in the first film. I recently viewed "So I Married an Axe Murderer" for the second and a half time, and I realized that Myers really isn't as funny when he's playing someone close to himself. His character in "So I..." isn't as shy as Myers is in real life, but he talks, looks, walks, smiles, and dresses like Myers. Myers as Powers is entirely different, however - he's about twenty times funnier. Not that Myers isn't funny, but you'll notice he is much more funny dressed up as someone else. Look at his "Saturday Night Live" skits and you'll see that Myers' best skits were those when he dressed up as different people (i.e. the Scottish Crap Store man).
Heather Graham may not be the most talented actress, and I especially found her over--or under--acting in this film compared to her performances in "Boogie Nights" and "Bowfinger"--but I think she may have done that on purpose. As we all know, Bond girls usually aren't the best actresses, so perhaps she over/under-acted as a parody on Bond films. Maybe not.
Either way she's much better than Hurley was.
Robert Wagner returns to the role of Number 2, a spoof on...well...Number 2 from the James Bond film "Thunderball"--complete with the eye patch and all. He does just as well as he did in the first film, if not better. I think he was a bit apprehensive of enveloping his character in the original "Powers" film--but he seems more confident here.
Mindy Sterling returns to her role of Frau, Dr. Evil's female henchman--and we find out here that the only man she has ever been with--or ever will be with--is Dr. Evil. Their offspring? Seth Green, reprising his role as Scott Evil--whom was thought to be Dr. Evil's test tube baby, when he is, in fact, the outcome of a one-night-stand with Evil and Frau. Of course the chance that Evil would have the exact same son (Green) with Frau as he did when Scott Evil was born by means of test tubes (even if Frau was the test tube mother) is around one in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to the tenth power (if that whole theory is a little unclear, sorry--I can't think of any other way to put it without getting too...medical...), but that doesn't matter--it's a comedy!
It's also worth mentioning that a younger version of Number 2 is played by Rob Lowe--who perfectly mimicks Robert Wagner.
All in all, "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" is not exactly the greatest comedy, but it's just about as good as the first, if off by a little.
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