Austin-tatious

What a strange world. Who would've thought two years ago that Mike Myers' hit-and-miss 60s/spy spoof Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery would rake in $100 million on film and video, prompting a sequel that not only has already made more in its first weekend than the original did in a summer, but is the best-opening comedy in history, and knocked off Star Wars as current boxoffice champ. Of course, in between There's Something About Mary came along and made rudeness, if not more palatable, certainly a lot more profitable, which in Hollywood are the same thing. A.P: The Spy Who Shagged Me is not going to make Miss Manners' list of approved tea-time movies. But more than Adam Sandler, David Spade, or any of his other contemporaries, including Jim Carrey, Myers can be forgiven a lot because he's genuinely clever when he's not nauseating.

After the Shirley Bassey-sounding theme song by They Might Be Giants and a Lucas-style opening crawl, the second installment takes up right where the first left off: in bed with Elizabeth Hurley. Not to give much away, but Austin's bachelorhood, like James Bond's in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (the only turn at 007 by Australian model cum actor George Lazenby), is hardly interrupted before he's a schwinging single again. This time the generational anachronisms get turned around as the hairy-chested, fuzzy-toothed world-saver goes back to 1969 to retrieve his mojo - which looks like a beaker full of hair gel - stolen by time-traveling Dr. Evil while Austin was helpless in deep freeze.

Actually, none of that plot stuff matters much. Like Wayne's World, but with music and visuals that are more fun, A.P.:T.S.W.S.M. reflects Myers' sketchcom roots by being less a story than a series of gags, both comedic and gastric. As such, it's awfully funny most of the time, moreso than the original. Myers recycles thankfully little of that material, and what he does reuse gets freshened up. Dr. Evil's son Scott (Seth Green) is back, still incredulous that his dad won't just shoot Austin when he has him rather than concoct some Rube Goldberg poetic revenge (the scene where they go on Springer above the caption "My Father Is Evil and He Wants to Take Over the World" and wind up throwing chairs at Klansmen is priceless) So is eye-patched henchman Number 2 (again played in the 90s by Robert Wagner, but in the 60s by Rob Lowe, sounding so much like Wagner you'd think his voice was looped), who financed the operation by investing in a little startup coffee stand called Starbuck's while Dr. Evil was asleep, and would be happier taking over Wall St. than putting a giant laser on the moon to incinerate Washington.

It's always Myers who carries the show, though. Whether he's frug-ing to "Magic Carpet Ride" in the blindingly primary-colored Piccadilly discotheque where he meets American agent Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham), or aping Will Smith's "Just the Two of Us" in a rap devotion to Dr. Evil's half-pint clone, Mini-Me, the guy is just too gleefully silly and incorrigible for us to hold the gross stuff against him. Even Dr. E's morbidly obese, dreadfully unhygienic Scottish cannibal henchman Fat Bastard (Myers under a metric tonne of latex prosthetics) eventually starts to get around your defenses. Credit a sense of playfulness that lets Myers get away with things that from other angrier, less inspired arrested adolescents would have you demanding your money back. There's one particular sequence, an unbelievably long string of phallic innuendoes (from cameo stars who probably lined up to get involved), that must have sounded dreadful typed up in script form, but when realized onscreen is gut-busting hysterical. Just don't leave until all the end credits have run, since there are three more scenes to go after the first -- how do you say -- "ending." And if you're a real fan, warm up the Lear Jet, because there are supposedly three different versions of the print in circulation, one each for the East and West Coast and England, with the humor tweaked to regional sensibilities.

One more interesting thing at work here: as silly as the James Bond movies have become through their successive incarnations, it's not really possibly to parody them anymore. They're already self-parody. Which means that, practically (and financially) speaking, Austin Powers is James Bond now, just without so much napalm. And in a couple decades, after what will probably be a dozen more episodes, people will be having discussions like, "Who was your favorite Austin Powers?" "You can't beat the original. Mike Myers, definitely. Both male and female fans thought he was soooo sexy." "I like the second series, fastidious Austin, the ones that marked a comeback for Leonardo DiCaprio after it got out he's really a woman." "Wait, you're forgetting the one made in New Zealand that nobody saw, starring Roger Clinton as an old Austin coming out of retirement to take on global warming and alien soccer hooligans." "That counts only in Trivial Pursuit. I like the new, nerdier Austin, with Jonathan Lipnicki. Hearing him say, 'Did you know the human head weighs seven pounds, baby?' makes me all weak in the knees…" B

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