2. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
Yup. Going back-to-back Mike Myers. Austin Powers is really a unique topic to discuss when it comes to comedies. The Austin Powers series is looked back on now as obnoxious and kind of an after thought. We really forget just how influential and popular this series was though. It was massive, and I think that’s the problem. How many people in the late nineties spouted off “Yeah, baby!” and “Oh, behave!” This thing was a monster of its own doing. I cannot think of a comedy series more overexposed than this one, and I think that’s what drove people to hate it so much. But we truly forget just how funny this series was, albeit to a lesser extent with the third one.
While definitely not as good as the original as that had the iconic Dr. Evil Belgium story, The Spy Who Shagged Me still worked with flying colors. This was a zany madcap blitz of comedic energy that we really haven’t seen since. While a few repeated jokes go on a bit long, everything seemed to hit with this one. But as funny as Austin Powers himself was, this was the Dr. Evil show. Myers created one of the funniest characters at the time, and his pairing with Mini-Me (Verne Troyer) was legendary. Again though, Mini-Me and Dr. Evil were so overexposed to the point of nausea, we forget just how funny they were at the time.
This film also came out in 1999, and I think of The Spy Who Shagged Me as the grand finale of nineties pop culture. In a decade where so many jokes came and went, this movie hit on all of them. “Show me the money!” “You complete me.” “Don’t go there!” “Talk to the hand.” Will Smith. Jerry Springer. This had it all. If you haven’t watched this movie in years, I’d give it another shot. You might be pleasantly surprised.
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