Mike Myers, fake bear-hair chest and all, romps naked through a French hotel in the opening credits of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. He breezes past a banquet table, where a banana, a loaf of bread and a slab of kosher meat do stunt-double work for Austin’s favorite body part. Then he joins some bathing beauties for an Esther Williams-style aquacade. The joke here is that Austin feels no shame–indeed, he shows a kid’s Edenic exuberance–in blithely flaunting his puddingy torso; the joy is in seeing Myers’ dedication to being silly for our pleasure.
The comic who deludedly thinks he’s supercool is as old as Bob Hope and as hip as early Albert Brooks, Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman. The idea is to be both endearing and irritating. Her Majesty’s dippiest spy is just that as he yo-yos between the ’60s and the ’90s in his battle with Dr. Evil (also Myers). Our hero wants to save the world a bit less than Dr. E wants to destroy it. He’d rather drive his Shaguar, or shag till he’s spent in his shagedelic pad. Austin is fond of the word shag.
This time, in the script written by Myers and Michael McCullers and directed by Jay Roach, Dr. E has stolen Austin’s mojo, the essence of his rampant sexuality. Our hero returns to swinging London and meets Felicity Shagwell (gear-fab Heather Graham), a dedicated spy with the body of a Shindig dancer.
Plundering junk culture, Myers pays homage to ’60s movies that were hardly worth venerating the first time around: not just the James Bond canon but the twit-Brit Carry On comedies. All right, what? Myers should do a Woody (Allen) and do a fond riff on Ingmar Bergman films? No way: some movie fashions are too moribund even to poke a stick at.
Besides, a tribute to Persona would offer even less excuse than exists here for all the groin gags and caca humor: a dozen nicknames for penis, a flotilla of turd jokes and a scene in which Austin sips a stool sample from the revolting double agent Fat Bastard (Myers again). Does the toilet raillery go on too long? Yeah, baby, you get it! Being tiresomely infantile is funny too!
And so is selling out. Some stars might balk at product placement; Myers not only puts a Heineken joke in the film (“Get your hands off my Heinie, baby”) but touts the beer in print ads and TV spots. There’s also a plug for “Virgin Shaglantic.” AP2 might not quite equal The Phantom Menace at the box office, but it’s tops in self- and cross-exploitation.
AP2 starts out bright and clever–shagnificent, we might almost say–before sinking into a swamp of shagnation. But one feels like Fat Bastard when pooping on Austin’s parade. The film has funny bits, and Myers means no harm. Let him keep dancing on, and let audiences laugh themselves sillier than he is.
–R.C.
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