Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

After such a funny and iconic first movie, it was always going to be hard to do a follow up. But with Mike Myers handling the screen play (alongside Michael McCullers of Saturday Night Live) once again, we get one of those rare a sequels that lives up to it's predecessor. I present to you, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Released in 1999, and once again starring Mike Myers (now in 3 roles rather than 2) alongside new entries Heather Graham and Verne Troyer. Much in the same vein of the first movie, it's about our charismatic hero and attractive heroine trying to to defeat the villain who has, naturally, a diabolical scheme. While having an almost identical story-line as the original, it also has it's charm and wit, and that makes for a great follow-up, so let's dive in.

Following their victory over Dr. Evil in the last film, Austin and Vanessa are happily married and enjoying their honeymoon. But things goes awry when Vanessa turns out to be a homicidal robot programmed to kill him. After she self-destructs, Austin laments upon her loss (a reference to On Her Majesty's Secret Service), but then realizes that he is once again bachelor, and free to indulge in his swinging lifestyle as before.

After return to the Earth from a second spate of cryogenesis, Dr. Evil and his organisation have now established their headquarters in Starbucks in Seattle. His cohorts inform him that they have created a clone of him, who is identical to him in every way, aside from being 1/8th his size, dubbed Mini-Me (Troyer). Following this, Dr. Evil is quick to unveil his newest scheme: To defeat Austin Powers with a Time Machine. Scott's sensible suggestion of using the Machine to travel back in time and kill Powers when he is vulnerable is, of course, dismissed for one infinitely more fatuous. Dr. Evil means to steal Austin Powers 'Mojo', the loss of which will render Powers ultimately powerless.

To steal Powers' Mojo, Evil uses a disgruntled, corpulent Scottish stereotype named 'Fat Bastard' (Myers), who, back in time when Powers was frozen, steals his Mojo, effectively putting Powers out of action. While this is going on, Dr. Evil travels back to the 60s to collect the Mojo, and to see his new base, a hollowed-out Volcano. Did I mention that he's evil?

To help Powers in his mission to stop Dr. Evil once again trying to extort $100,000,000,000 from the World Government, Austin works with another agent named Felicity Shagwell (Graham), who, unfortunately has the hots for our newly impotent hero.

Staying true to the Bond spoofing formula, we get much the same as the first movie. All the dumb plans, unnecessary speeches, provocatively named female characters, it's all here, but what makes this movie work is it's jokes. It's got a lot of great gags, a lot of which revolve round Fat Bastard, who just cracks me up. His constant anger, thick accent, and fervent believe that he is highly desirable all add up to a very memorable character. If I had to pick 1 thing that I really don't enjoy, it would be the character of Mini-Me. I think the movie could've worked just as well, if not better, without him. He's just annoying, especially the squeaky noise he always make.

But that aside, I always enjoy watching this film. You can put it on anytime and it'll put a big smile on your face. Will the next film make it 3 out of 3? Tune in next week to find out.