# Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

### reviewed by
Stephen Sills

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me A review by Stephen Sills Rated PG-13 (sickeningly gross humor, mild language)

I will not deny the fact that Mike Meyers is a gifted, perhaps even brilliant comedian. Nor will I deny the fact that "The Spy Who Shagged Me" is a frequently humorous, occasionally hilarious film. Yes, this is a funny movie, but it's also a very sick, demented one. There are some images in this film that you'd have to pay me to see again.

According to the "Star Wars"-ish crawl that starts the movie off, Austin (Mike Meyers) has defeated his arch nemesis, Dr. Evil (also played by Meyers) and has since married his love interest, Vanessa (Elizabeth Hurley).

We cut to the couple's honeymoon sweet. Vanessa turns out to be a robotic agent of Dr. Evil and nearly kills Austin with her breast-mounted machine guns. Austin barely escapes, lamenting the loss of his wife until he realizes that he's a bachelor again. His pain is further alleviated by an assignment that involves lingerie photo shoot. True to form, he winds up in bed with one of the models.

In the meantime, Dr. Evil resurfaces and hatches a truly nefarious scheme. Utilizing a time machine, he plans to travel to the 60s and steal Austin's mojo (his libido) from his still-frozen persona. Evil successfully completes the time travel procedure and sends Fat Bastard (also played by Meyers), a gargantuan Scotsman, to do the job. Unfortunately for our hero and his sexual partner, Fat Bastard succeeds, thus rendering Austin infertile right in the middle of his sexual encounter.

Fortunately, the British Government has also developed a time travel device, and so they send Austin back in time to save his mojo.

Once there, Austin meets up with Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham), a sexy American spy. Together, they discover an even worse scheme: Evil, with the accompaniment of Fat Bastard and a pint-sized version of himself, Mini-Me (Verne Troyer), has placed a powerful laser gun on the moon, and will decimate Washington unless he is paid one hundred billion dollars by the U.S. Government. Austin and Felicity must travel to the moon to thwart Evil and recover Austin's mojo.

Like I said earlier, this movie is truly hilarious at times. A scene that takes place on "Jerry Springer," for example, is one of the funniest things that I've seen in a long time. Dr. Evil is great, and Mini-Me is surprisingly likable in a weird sort of way.

The Austin Powers character is also a wonderful invention and is played to perfection by Meyers. He's a James Bond type with a tenth of the charisma and twice the sex drive, and yet he comes over with childlike innocence. It's hilarious to see Austin, with his frazzled hair, horrid teeth, unseemly features, and over-the-top accent make women swoon with lines like "Do I make you horny, baby? Do I?"

Fat Bastard didn't do much for me, though. Like so many other things in this movie, he was little more than obscenely gross. The same can be said for about half of this movie's attempts at humor. Joke after joke elicited an almost vomiturition reaction from me. The most notable is a scene where Austin mistakes Fat Bastards feces for coffee. It was so gross that I came close to leaving the theater.

In the end, your enjoyment of "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" will depend exclusively on your tolerance level for sick humor. Personally, I have a finely drawn line for such things, and this movie passed it frequently. If you can stand a lot of the stuff, you'll love it. If not, you'd be best advised to stay away.

    ** out of ****

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