Cinema
Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me (12, selected cinemas)
Celebrating naffness
Mark Steyn
If memory serves, I believe I hailed Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery as the greatest British film of all time — even though it's the work of a Canadian. Certain- ly Austin, with his horn-rim specs, splayed teeth, chest rug, jelly belly, crushed velvet suit and sophisticated repartee (`Do I make you horny, baby?'/Wanna take a peek at me twig and . berries?'/`Yeah, baby! Let's shag!!!'), is a more accurate embodiment of the British male in all his fascinating ghastli- ness than, say, Hugh Grant's dangly-haired diffidents. And his creator, Mike Myers, has single-handedly done more for the cause of British English than the entire London the- atre: all over America teenagers are using hitherto unknown Briticisms such as 'shag', `randy' and 'a bit of alright'.
Most critical evaluations of Austin Pow- ers tend to lump him in with other gross- out comedies such as American Pie or the works of Adam Sandler. But this seems to me to miss the point. Austin is a great comic creation because he embraces the defining English characteristic: naffness. Most American movie stars — even the comics — are too conscious of their image to go that route: Robin Williams or Jim Carrey, for example, are wacky, zany, goofy, but never naff. Mike Myers, by con- trast, though a Torontonian, has an Englishman's boundless appetite for the naff, and at its best Austin Powers 2 is a joy- ous celebration of it. Thus, the film opens with an irresistible sequence in which Austin, with an inventive array of strategi- cally placed objets to hide his dangly bits, prances nude through a hotel lobby to the swingin' Sixties sounds of Quincy Jones's `Soul Bossa Nova'.
It's ironic that his executive producer is Demi Moore because, if Demi's nude dance scenes in Striptease had had a tenth of the gleeful abandon of Austin's opening sequence, her film wouldn't have been such a godawful ponderous, earnest stinker.
Austin, as we know, is a living anachro- nism — a Sixties spy cryogenically frozen and thawed out 30 years later to do battle with his old nemesis Dr Evil (also played by Myers). Both men are struggling to cope with societal changes they can barely com- prehend: during Dr Evil's absence in outer space, his Number Two (Robert Wagner) has bought a small Seattle coffee business called Starbucks (a very Nineties joke) and, on the doctor's return, tries to explain that, as he sees it, the future of the organisation lies in diversifying out of the world domina- tion business and concentrating on provid- ing 'premium coffees at affordable prices'. Dr Evil will have none of it. He immediate- ly announces a plan to go back in time to the 1960s and genetically extract Austin's `mojo' — the essence of his sexual being. The 1990s Austin is playing erotic chess with the glamorous East European siren Ivana Humpalot when he suddenly realises that his mojo has, indeed, vanished, and he must return to the Sixties to recover it.
Once back in the Carnaby Street of his youth, he runs into pretty much who you'd expect — a young Number Two (Rob Lowe doing an amusing Robert Wagner impression), Michael York as his boss, Burt Bacharach again (this time with Elvis Costello). Missing, alas, is Elizabeth Hur- ley's Vanessa Kensington, one of the delights of the original and the highlight of Miss Hurley's entire screen oeuvre. I know that's not saying much, but it's somehow typical of the judgment she's brought to her choice of roles that she declined to return for the sequel, save for a brief appearance in the film's prelude where her nipples turn out to be automatic weapons. Her place as 'the girl' is taken by Heather Graham as CIA agent Felicity Shagwell. Miss Graham is a comely lovely, not to say a lovely comely, but she and Myers lack the shagadelic chemistry he had with Miss Hur- ley. Felicity's most memorable scene occurs not with Austin but when she's lying in bed with this film's new villain, a disgustingly corpulent Scotsman called Fat Bastard also played by Myers, aided by extensive prosthetics. Incidentally, it seems odd that the only fat people you ever see in Holly- wood movies are played by thin stars with prosthetics (Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor) when America has more genuine lardbutts than any other society in human history. I'm surprised the Federation of, Acting Tubbies (FAT) puts up with it.
But I digress, which is pretty much what the film does as it dutifully chugs from Dr Evil's rap routine to human turd analysis jokes to a montage of synonyms for 'penis'. The distinction of the first Austin Powers was that it wasn't just one of those scatter- shot Zucker/Abrahams spoofs like Air- plane! or Top Secret!, where a thousand gags are flung at the screen in the hope that a hundred stick. The original had its oddly tender moments, as Austin realises he's a man out of time: 'You've missed so much,' says Vanessa, after she's given him a video showing the election of Mrs Thatcher, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release of Nelson Mandela, etc. 'Yeah,' he says. 'I can't get over Liberate being gay. I mean, the women were crazy for him.' Dr Evil was in much the same position: 'Don't you realise?' says Robert Wagner. 'There's no good or evil any more. It's all just cor- porations.' The sequel's script, by Myers and Michael McCullers, is less ambitious and the direction, by Jay Roach, less stylish. The character does the same jokes engagingly enough, but the new Austin doesn't really expand the franchise. In its first weeks in America, the film outgrossed the new Star Wars, for which we should all be thankful, but Myers can do better. Here's to Austin 3.
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