Austin Powers:The Spy Who Shagged Me [comedy] Rating: * (out of 4) 1999, PG-13, 95 minutes Cast: Mike Myers, Heather Graham, Seth Green, Michael York Directed by Jay Roach Written by Mike Myers, Michael McCullers
The new Austin Powers film continues a movie tradition begun in the eighties. Produce something, anything, that will get the high school and junior high kids in the theater because they buy more soda and popcorn than senior citizens. The usual hallmarks of this filmmaking tradition are all here. Gross humor, sex jokes, silly sight gags, more sex jokes. And the film is a strong contender in the current race to be cruder, grosser and more outrageous than that last film. What the film is not, however, is funny.
The plot centers around the return of Dr.Evil, who goes back in time to steal Austin Powers' mojo (a liquid with red stuff in it extracted from Austin's pelvis) which gives Austin his sexual prowess and the charisma to defeat his enemies. Austin must go after him, and returns to the swinging sixties where free love and sexy secret agents had their heyday.
I almost avoided this film because I did not like the original. But the films premise sounded like an excellent comic vehicle and the film received many good reviews. I wish I had stuck to my first impression.
Myers is trying to be the Jerry Lewis of this generation. And he has the talent to do it, at least as an actor. But the material he is working with here, much of it his own, falls short of anything resembling comic genius. This movie tries to carry the day with sight gags about drinking distilled feces, a five-hundred-pound fat man's butt crack, and a barrage of sex jokes aimed at the level of the average 15 year old. After some of these scenes, one has to wonder how gross the next generation of films will have to go to get an audiences attention.
The direction also helps the film achieve a new low point in cinematic humor. For the most part, I felt as if I was watching a Saturday morning chalderns live action TV show. There is no sense of comic timing or subtlety. The director just throws the material at us, giving us nothing except the hope that anyone with a camera could be a film director.
I am sure the film will have appeal to many of the under 22 crowd, at least the one's who have yet to discover literacy. Certainly the movie is directed towards the generation that prefers everything described as 'in your face, kick you in the teeth, take no prisoners, (action-verb +blah blah blah).' If you see the film and you find you're not laughing, there is nothing wrong with you. It just means you grew up since seventh grade.
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