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When the British Secret Service, led by Basil Exposition (Michael York), finds itself facing a supervillain, it resorts to defrosting its own superspy, Austin Powers, a dentally challenged horndog who was cryogenically frozen at the peak of Carnaby Street chic just in case his talents were ever needed again. Paired with lovely agent Vanessa (Elizabeth Hurley), the defrosted Powers is tasked with taking out Dr. Evil (also Myers), a hopelessly incompetent bad guy who has also recently been unfrozen and whose overly complicated schemes for world domination are ridiculed by his estranged, straight-talking son Scott Evil (Seth Green). TV trivia buffs will quickly see that Dr. Evil is clearly based on Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels.
The big question: Can Austin function in the modern world? 'As long as people are still having promiscuous sex with many anonymous partners without protection while at the same time experimenting with mind-expanding drugs in a consequence-free environment, I'll be sound as a pound!' Uh oh. Constantly distracted by his desire to 'shag' Vanessa, it's hard to imagine that Powers will get anywhere on his mission.
Dr. Evil has assembled a world-class lineup of weird assassins to go after Powers, not to mention his small army of fembots (female robots armed with machine gun breasts who march to the tune of 'These Boots Were Made for Walking'), and his pool of sharks equipped with 'frickin' lasers. Gag piles on top of gag as Austin tangles with sex siren Alotta Fagina, penetrates Dr. Evil's not so 'secret lair,' and tries to retrieve the nuclear weapon with which Dr. Evil is holding the world hostage for, dramatic pause, 100 BILLION dollars, after he's adjusted for inflation.
Myers's screenwriting technique is to go, go, go and throw, throw, throw, hoping to score more laughs than misfires and coin as many catchphrases as possible. He basically gets the job done, most notably as Dr. Evil, who, it turns out, is a far funnier character than Powers himself. Dr. Evil's painfully awkward interactions with his son are hilarious, in part because they sound improvised and utterly true to life. He may be a supervillain, but Dr. Evil is also a distant dad looking for an Oprah-style reconciliation.
More than ten years after its release, Austin Powers has earned its place in pop culture history for implanting such phrases as 'Yeah, baby, yeah!' in our collective consciousness. Austin Powers and Dr. Evil are indelible characters who remain marginally funny through the two sequels, and given how some of Myers's more recent projects have fared, it seems a sure bet that we'll see Austin Powers again someday. So you don't have to shag him now. You can shag him later.
The Blu-ray Austin Powers collection includes numerous extras, with deleted scenes, commentary, and other extras for all three films.
