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

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Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

Rating

Director

Jay Roach

Screenplay

Mike Myers, Michael McCullers

Length

1h 35m

Starring

Mike Myers, Heather Graham, Michael York, Robert Wagner, Rob Lowe, Seth Green, Mindy Sterling, Verne J. Troyer, Elizabeth Hurley, Gia Carides

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Review

When “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” hit video stores, it had made a scant $53 million in the United States, but became one of history’s most successful video releases. It was then decided that a sequel was in order and thus was born “The Spy Who Shagged Me.”

The sequel opens with Austin (Mike Myers) on vacation with his lovely wife, Vanessa Kinsington (Elizabeth Hurley). She turns out to be a fembot and starts attacking him. He winds up killing her, but leaves a broken man.

Meanwhile, Dr. Evil (Myers), working with his Number Two (Robert Wagner) comes up with a way to travel back in time and steal Austin’s mojo while he’s trapped in his cryogenic chamber. He returns to find a Young Number Two (Rob Lowe) and a virtually unchanged Frau Farbissina (Mindy Sterling) who we find out is the actual mother of Scott (Seth Green).

In an attempt to clone Dr. Evil, they have created an annoying midget named Mini-Me (Verne Troyer) who doesn’t speak, but is quite evil. He spends most of the film trying to eat things he shouldn’t and threatening to kill Scott.

When Austin realizes he’s lost his Mojo, he goes back in time with Basil Exposition’s (Michael York) time machine in the form of a car à la “Back to the Future.” When he arrives, his pad is swinging with a party and he finds himself attracted to a young woman named Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham). He narrowly escapes several attempts on his life by another woman at the party, Robin Swallows (Gia Carides).

Among the other colorful characters in the film are Ivana Humpalot (Kristen Johnston), an agent posing as a model for one of Austin’s photo shoots and Fat Bastard (Myers again), an earth-shaking Irishman who wants to eat everything inside and whose most-repeated line is “get in my belly.”

The production qualities of “The Spy Who Shagged Me” are to as good, if not better than the original, but the film never lives up to its predecessor. There are some extremely funny moments, such as most of the moments with Fat Bastard and a shadow puppet sequence, but it almost feels like too little to late.

Myers is extraordinary in his ability to play each of his three parts and Lowe does a dead-on impersonation of Wagner. Then there’s the wonderful Green whose Scott is one of the more impressive roles in the film. Johnston does well, but is quite transparent. Sterling is no better in this film than in the original, but is one of the more interesting characters.

The worst performance comes from a rather surprising place. Graham, who was terrific in “Boogie Nights” is shallow and weak as Shagwell and her place in the film feels like little more than window dressing.

Overall, “The Spy Who Shagged Me” has some great moments, but with a flimsy plot and a few hollow characters can’t live up to the original in any way, shape or form. For a summer movie, it’s good, for a regular movie, it’s merely okay.

Fans of the original will find a lot to enjoy in the film and some might even consider it better, but if you didn’t like the first, then don’t bother with this one. With its box office success, it is almost certain that we’ll soon be seeing another film. Perhaps it will be “A Shag to a Kill” or “License to Shag,” but maybe they’ll find one Bond title too good to change: “Octopussy” or maybe not.