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AUSTIN POWERS :
THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME
by Devin Rambo
I will admit that, when I saw the first Austin Powers movie, I regarded
it as a guilty pleasure. And, on subsequent viewings, I kept on laughing
at jokes that I'd already seen a few times, and it made me appreciate
what a funny, well-crafted piece of comedy fantasy it is.
Being as that may, my darlings, it is with great disappointment
that I report that the highly anticipated sequel, alternately titled
The Spy Who Shagged Me, is not funny.
To be more precise, it's a whole lotta not funny.
The premise that makes the first film so endearing is that Mike Myers
makes Austin such a misfit, albeit one who is completely confident
in himself and his antiquated social attitudes even after being transported
into the late 1990s. Myers got a lot of mileage out of how Austin
and his nemesis, Dr. Evil, react anachronistically to their new surroundings.
But, this time around, Myers seems to have gotten a bit lazy, because
he tries to get even more mileage out of rearranging the same gags
from the first movie into the new movie. The mystifying thing about
this is that the filmmakers seem to know that it isn't going to work.
They heighten the gags too far and let them go on for far too long.
The hilarious "shh" scene from the first movie is resurrected here
as a "zip it" scene, and, after about the second "zip it", it stops
being funny, because we've already covered this territory. One is
reminded of the axiom put forth by Alan Alda in Woody Allen's Crimes
and Misdemeanors, "If it bends, it's funny; if it breaks, it's
not funny". If that line seemed a bit esoteric at the time, rest assured
that The Spy Who Shagged Me is the clarifying example of what
the line means.
Many gags, like an appearance by Dr. Evil on the Jerry
Springer show, or Dr. Evil doing a rap number directly into the camera, seem to
be Saturday Night Live-inspired gags that function in a vacuum
and have nothing to do with any plot. Really, there isn't a plot. Even
the first movie had something resembling a linear narrative. Here it's
just a collection of loosely related sequences that feel stitched
together haphazardly.
And what's with the gross-out humor? By now, you may have
heard about - I'm not kidding - the shit-drinking scene. Believe me, the
scene is too bizarre to be funny and may have the weak of stomach racing
for the exits in search of a barf bag.
But there are a couple of funny bits. There is a
difficult-to-describe collage of references to the shape of Dr. Evil's spacecraft
that is a hoot. And the riffs on the Star Wars movies are a treat. But
let's face it...you have to cut through a lot of gristle here to get to
the good stuff. This movie isn't going to lose anything on a TV set,
so save your
$8 and wait to rent the tape.
Devin Rambo CineScene 1999
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