AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY

Straight white teeth are not required to attract women, but it helps if you are British, wear groovy clothes and hail from the 1960s. Playing a secret agent frozen in the 1960s and thawed in the 1990s, Mike Meyers stars as AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY, a lecherous smoothie who gets the girl and the bad guy while confounding modern society.

As a member of Saturday Night Live, Mike Meyers was known for his bizarre and funny characters, most notably the slacker teenager, Wayne Campbell, who went on to star in two WAYNE’S WORLD movies. Meyers’s post-WAYNE movie career has been tenuous at best, and here, he certainly has crafted an off-beat personality, but has limited himself as sexual cad in a mediocre James Bond spoof.

Back in 1967, Austin Powers worked as a fashion photographer in London during the day and worked at night for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He was also romancing Mrs. Kensington (Mimi Rogers), and trying to foil the nefarious bald, kitty-cat stroking villain Dr. Evil (also played by Mike Meyers). When Dr. Evil escapes in a space ship that looks like a giant Big Boy, he freezes himself with a plan to thaw out and return in 1997 to exact more villainy on the world. The British Government knows that the only man who can stop Dr. Evil is Austin Powers, so they freeze Austin powers and thaw him out when Dr. Evil returns to the earth.

Austin Powers partners with Mrs. Kensington’s daughter, Ms. Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley) and immediately tries to bed her. Refusing his advances, she insists their relationship is purely professional. Dr. Evil threatens the United Nations that unless he is given $1 million, no! − $5 billion, he will plant a bomb in the center of the earth causing all of the earth’s volcanoes to simultaneously erupt. Through daring-do and smooth talking, Austin Powers comes to the rescue, resulting in Ms. Kensington’s adoration and sexual openness.

This movie is clearly a spoof on James Bond with an added dose of 1960’s grooviness. The villain, the sets, the womanizing hero, and the gadgets are all stock and trade of the spy genre. Austin’s clothes and free-living nature are reminiscent of the Beatles or Laugh In. Here, the two attitudes don’t make a great mix. Austin Powers, whose limited vocabulary of “baby” is tiresome, is a sexually aggressive man. A great deal of humor involves the use of an enlarging device for his male sexual organ. He also dances and prances around trying to impress Ms. Kensington. The bomb that Dr. Evil uses to penetrate the earth looks like a phallus, and the list of scatological humor continues.

While having a sophomoric and juvenile sense of humor, the 1960’s retro-speak and attitudes may be lost on the young generation. Those who know about the 60s or early James Bond fans will find the spoof to be shallow and dull. WAYNE’S WORLD and SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER worked for Mike Meyers because, though he characters were goofy, they were lovable and multi-dimensional. We don’t laugh with AUSTIN POWERS, we laugh at him.

Elizabeth Hurley has been championed not only as a beautiful face, but also a shrewd businesswoman. You can’t tell by this movie, or her recent flop DANGEROUS GROUND. Perhaps, she is locked into a contract with New Line and isn’t being offered any decent roles. Young males may deem her face and figure as an added attraction to this movie, but her contemporary smart girl attitude is no comic counterpart to Austin’s misogynist ways. Any comic potential is lost in this movie.