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

### reviewed by
Jonathan Richards

    OH, BEHAVE!

    AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME
    Directed by Jay Roach
    Written by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers
    With Mike Myers, Heather Graham
    UA South, De Vargas    PG-13      95 min.

Mike Myers's follow-up to his enormously successful 60s superspy hit is relentlessly and cheerfully tasteless. To call it sophomoric would be an insult to sophomores everywhere. And to call it funny would be an understatement. It's not all funny, not by any means. A lot of toilet humor is just plain excrescence, and there's a lot of toilet humor here, as well as jokes covering the entire lower end of the comedy spectrum. But Mike Myers is a funny guy, and his inspired creations Austin Powers and Dr. Evil still have some good miles left in their tread. He tries a third persona here, a fat slob of a Scotsman, who has none of the wit of the other two and should have been drowned at birth. If you think you might be offended by the movie's crudeness, it's a good bet you will. But if you're up to it, there's a lot to laugh at here. At the close of Powers I, Austin had foiled archenemy Dr. Evil and married the beautiful Elizabeth Hurley. But marriage isn't the swinging superspy's bag, baby, and it's a relief when circumstances leave him single and available to the shaggadelic Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham). The bad doctor reappears to surprise his son (Seth Green) on a Jerry Springer show on the theme "My Father Is Evil and Wants to Take Over the World". He then constructs a time-travel machine, and, accompanied by his compact clone Mini-me (Verne J. Troyer) , heads back to the 60s and steal Powers's mojo, a marrow-like substance extracted from the agent's cryogenically preserved body which provides his irresistible sex appeal and shaggability. The plot is all in the service of the gags. Product placement figures shamelessly, as with Dr. Evil locating his headquarters in a Starbucks atop Seattle's Space Needle. There are good gags, bad gags, scatological humor, sexually incorrect humor, fat jokes, short jokes, penis jokes, breast jokes, lesbian jokes. Sometimes a joke works once, and falls flat when it returns for an encore. Sometimes once is too much. If you're still in your seat after half an hour, you're probably in for the long haul.

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