Austin Powers:
The Spy Who Shagged Me

Reviewed by D.K. Holm

et us now gather together and bow our heads to grieve over the death of comedy. Henceforth the cinema shall try to make us laugh through the use of shit, spit, and come. We will rollick over leaking buttocks, we will howl at  drool  and spittle pouring from a gaping, food-encrusted mouth. The gross outer is the king of comedy. No longer is verbal wit to be held at a premium in the art of film. It's irrelevant. Irony, the winking eye, the clawing forefingers in the air to indicate that what is said is not really meant, now prevail. R.I.P., Billy Wilder. Joe Mankiewicz, we hardly knew ye.

That being noted, there are some pretty funny moments in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

It's just that, when the movie isn't funny, it really isn'tfunny. Jokes about objects inserted into or pulled out of rectums don't sit well, so to speak, with this reviewer, and though the audience laughed (a rather forced laugh, I observed), on a fundamental level this sort of material  isn't comedy. This style of humor comes from Mel Brooks and Russ Meyer, not the most exquisite lineage.

As in the first film, Powers the character is a  continuation of the Flint/Matt Helm line of spy parodies. Less an hommageto the '60s or to James Bond, Austin Powers is a parody of a parody. In the end it is a Saturday Night Liveskit writ large, too large, with all the creative inhibitions that genre encourages. There are no true jokes. There are announced jokes. Things are said that are presented as jokes but they are the rough notes in a memo reminding someone to put a joke there. Take the example of the product placements for Heineken. The broadness of the gesture is "ironic," to misuse that word as everyone else does. Yet it is still a product placement, paid for handsomely by Heineken.

Myers must be a little bored with Austin. He and credited co-screenwriter Michael McCullers lavish much more attention on Dr Evil. While Powers is reduced to a shit-swilling buffoon deprived of his "mojo," Dr Evil remains an intriguingly, psychologically complex character with a gift for verbal invention (his "shushing" riffs). But than, it is standard in American cinema to believe that the villains are always more interesting than the good guys. There is a funny sequence with Scott Evil (Seth Green) on the Jerry Springer show, with Dr Evil showing up as a surprise guest. But then, how could such a sequence notbe funny. You'd have to be a pretty bad filmmaker not to fuck it up, and writer and producer turned director M Jay Roach is only pedestrian. Roach abandons his cast to their improvisational almost-real selves, and Green is good as the sullen grouchy teen, Myers fares from good to excellent in the four roles credited to him, and Heather Graham is inspired casting as this version's Powers Girl, who look s great in the '60s get-ups; and yet has an untapped talent that you can see occasionally in various glances and expressions. New Line allowed the filmmakers to spend upwards of $40 million dollars on this one but it still has the crass, overlit, cheap look, especially in the exteriors, of its limited budgeted predecessor.

As a parody the films creative life depends on its parasitically relationship with its inspirations. But when the film excels when it shows the results of observed life.  The "water cooler" scene, in which Dr Evil and Frau Farbissina (Mindy Sterling) confront the "weirdness" in the office after they have sex, is well done, quietly hilarious, and the result of actually observed life. If there were more wit such as this, and less feculent humor, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me;would have the strength of Wilder and Mankiewicz and not the weakness of SNL.

-- D K Holm
 

Check out Austin Powers cast and credits.
For more information and pictures go to the Austin Powers website, or to the Austin Powers fan club.

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