Freedom, Baby, YeahOr How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love...Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged MeThe Austin Powers movies could be best described as meta-metafiction, being spoofs of such movies as Our Man Flint and Matt Helm (which duh, were in turn spoofs of the James Bond genre) - but there, I have used two snooty literary terms in one sentence ("metafiction" and "genre") so now I must go and have my heinie spanked by Dr. Evil's henchmen.Just so long as it isn't Fat Bastard (a "bastard, who is fat"). I choose my punisher to be Scott Evil, who looks truly smashing in a feather boa thingie and makeup. (He's played by that actor kid, um, whatsisname, I think he's a regular on Buffy.) There is of course Dr. Evil, all the henchmen, and even Rob Lowe playing a youthful Number Two. Jerry Springer gets to play himself, and the movie was almost worth the price of the ticket just to see the "Fathers Who Want to Take Over the World" Springer show scenes, with Dr. Evil asking his much put-upon son for a hug. There is, of course, a new shag - I mean, love interest, this time blond and American and played by an actress named Heather. If one must nitpick, it would be only to say that many scenes were held just a few beats too long. I got the feeling that that was done deliberately, in order to make fun of other, less self-aware films and their painfully too-long scenes, but if that is so then the filmakers got too fond of this technique and used it too many times. The other critics, I thought, were right - this second Austin Powers movie was too self-indulgent. But still, give the movie looked all right, switched on, smashing, baby - especially the costumes. It is high time men went back to wearing brightly-colored velvet jackets, cravats, and so forth. Back to the Sixties, yeah, baby! Back to the movie list � |