Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

Starring - Mike Myers; Heather Graham; Michael York; Robert Wagner & Rob Lowe Director - Jay Roach MPAA - Rated PG-13 for sexual innuendo and crude humor. I'll have to say that I thought that Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was better than the first one. Although, to the credit of the original, it seems to be getting funnier each time I see it. I'm guessing that this one might play the same way. Austin Powers (Mike Myers) is still adjusting to the 90's when something evil happens. Dr. Evil, that is. Evil (Mike Myers) and Mr. Bigglesworth (Evil's hairless cat) return to Earth from their cryogenic sleep chamber on board their Big Boy satellite. Evil now has a plan to stop Austin Powers for good. His right hand man, Number 2 (Robert Wagner) has had a time machine built for Dr. Evil. Evil plans to use it to return to the 1960's and steal Austin Powers' mojo. And he is taking along some help. While Dr. Evil was in cryogenic sleep, his henchmen have cloned him. His clone is not quite the perfect match -- he is only 1/3 Evil's size. But even with his short stature, Mini Me (Verne Troyer) is a force to be reckoned with. So Evil and Mini Me go back in time where they hook up with a much younger Number 2 (Rob Lowe) and steal the mojo with the help of a disgruntled Scotsman by the name of Fat Bastard (Mike Myers). Austin must then return to the '60's to retrieve his mojo with the help of '60's secret agent Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham). I was very disappointed in the somewhat cheesy way that Elizabeth Hurley was dealt with in this movie. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be funny but it really didn't work for me. She had about two minutes of screen time and her scenes were pretty much the weakest points of the movie through no fault of her own. As in the first one, Dr. Evil steals the show, although, Fat Bastard is pretty good too. Felicity Shagwell comes a close second to the two evil Myers characters. Heather Graham is a very groovy, and a more than adequate replacement, for Hurley in both the looks and talent departments. Also, like the first one, Robert Wagner does a great job. As does Rob Lowe, playing Wagner's younger self. I wouldn't be surprised if this performance by Lowe resurrects his career. My sense is that fans of the old James Bond films will catch a few more of the jokes here than the rest of the audience. There are a lot of very subtle little things geared towards them that I really appreciated. Some of the humor, especially surrounding Fat Bastard, was downright disgusting. But I must admit that it was among the funniest in the film, and I laughed along with everyone else in the theater. At times I get the impression that Myers finds something that works and milks it a bit too much. The strategically placed object to disguise nudity worked really well in the first film. So instead of coming up with something more inventive, he based to whole opening sequence around the hidden nudity. It was funny, but just a bit of a cop-out in my opinion. Especially considering how much thought was put into the trailers spoofing the other movie of the summer of '99 -- The Phantom Menace. One sequence that I really enjoyed has a scene involving Dr. Evil's spaceship, which was in the shape of a part of the male anatomy. The descriptions used by people on the ground as they looked up at it flying through the sky were hilarious. Then of course, we have Mini Me (Vern Troyer), Dr. Evil's clone. He combined with Evil to come up with some great scenes. The interaction between Evil and his son Scott (Seth Green) also worked just as well in this film as it did in the original. As with the first, the writers played off the fact that Evil was just slightly behind on the progress that has been made during his 30 years of hibernation. But this time they added to it by having Evil screw up in the '60's by using '90's expressions with the 60's characters that he was trying to interact with. The movie was stolen by Myers playing Evil as he tried to be the hip villain but just usually ended up showing how square he really was. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged should easily rank as one of the funnier films of the year. The movie was groovy baby, yeah! 8/10 Reviewed June 28, 1999 by Joe Chamberlain