Review #772: 'Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery' (1997)

It's surprising to think that the second of two inspired characters thought up by Mike Myers, the flamboyant, sex-crazed super-spy Austin Powers, took so long to catch on. A modest showing at the box-office soon led to rampant word-of-mouth with it's VHS release, and soon enough, around the early 2000's, everybody seemed to responding to questions with "yeah, baby!". While it's hook is a mixture of (very accurately) spoofing 60's kitsch spy movies and outright silliness, Myers' Powers is winning thanks to the puppy-dog appeal of it's creator.

After seeing his nemesis Dr. Evil (also Myers) escape his clutches by cryogenically freezing himself and escaping in a Big Boy-shaped space rocket, Austin Danger Powers joins the likes of Evil Knievel and Vanilla Ice and freezes himself for 30 years. When Evil returns, planning on stealing the world's nuclear weapons, Powers is thawed out and is unleashed into a changed world. No longer are people experimenting with mind-altering drugs and having care-free, unprotected sex, and Powers gets lumped with his ex-partner's buzz-killing daughter Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley).

Myers seems fully aware that the 1960's were camp enough already to raise laughs, so the film spends a lot of time paying homage to the likes of the hyperactive energy of A Hard Day's Night (1964), the big-boobed laden, pervy fun of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), and even the ultra-chic photo-shoots of Antonioni's classic Blowup (1966). These scenes are surprisingly spot on, and Myers is in his element running away from an army of screaming girls to that now-iconic theme song. Of course, the film spends the majority of the film in the 1990's, and Powers seems incredibly out-dated, and people now notice his terrible teeth.

Most of the laughs come from the clever observations made of the early James Bond movies. Anyone who remembers Honor Blackman's ridiculously named Pussy Galore from Goldfinger (1964), will get a laugh from the character named Alotta Fagina, or Dr. Evil's shoe-throwing henchman Random Task. Or for anyone who has seen any of the Sean Connery Bond's, will no doubt be amused at Dr. Evil's insistence on placing Powers in an easily-escapable and elaborate death device and refusing to even watch the deed, much to the annoyance of Evil's son (Seth Green). The rest of the laughs are hardly clever - they tend to derive from Myers gurning or daft innuendo - but this is a silly and effortlessly humorous 90 minutes, full of quotable lines that are no doubt as dated as Powers' outfits.


Directed by: Jay Roach
Starring: Mike Myers, Elizabeth Hurley, Michael York, Robert Wagner, Mimi Rogers, Seth Green
Country: USA/Germany

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie