Danger is my middle name

April 28, 2017 7:20 AM

'Austin Powers' at 20: Mike Myers, Jay Roach, More Spill Secrets in Shagadelic Oral History.
posted by sapagan (31 comments total)

"Old" is mine.
posted by notyou at 7:22 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

My favorite thing about the Austin Powers series is that the second one made more in its opening weekend than the first one made in its entire theatrical run. Also, the second one knocked Phantom Menace out of #1.
posted by Etrigan at 7:33 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Can we all agree that the first Austin Powers was pretty fun and novel, and the second and third were atrocities that drove the joke into the ground and should never have been made?

Cool, thanks everyone!
posted by tocts at 7:42 AM on April 28, 2017 [21 favorites]

we are currently two thirds the length of time away from austin powers as it was from the era it was lampooning
posted by entropicamericana at 7:43 AM on April 28, 2017 [15 favorites]

The second one was also my biggest disappointment in a movie franchise in 1999, which is really saying something, considering that Phantom Menace was my #2. It's literally 85% recycled jokes from the first movie, which gets bumped up to about 95% recycling when you realize that Fat Bastard is basically just Myers doing another go-round with the Scotsman character from SNL and So I Married an Axe Murderer. It's some lazy, lazy screenwriting and I'd honestly expected better from both Myers and Roach.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:46 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

I would have loved to see the sequels (and the original, frankly) as stand alone Dr. Evil films, since his character and those characters around him were so much funnier than anything Myers was doing as Austin Powers. And it really could have worked. Just think of the entirety of a film taking place in Dr. Evil's lair where he gets reports back of how is various schemes are working/failing but not a bit of Powers actually on the screen.

It would have been great, I tell ya.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:50 AM on April 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

tocts is 100% correct. The first film was a delightful little diamond hidden amongst pebbles in a grassy field. The next two films were gaudy paste stones embedded in an asphalt parking lot.

Strange Interlude, the second film reused a joke from Wayne's World 2 ("England looks a lot like Southern California" vs. "Paramount only paid to shoot body doubles in London"). Unforgivable.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:55 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

The second one had its moments, mostly involving Verne Troyer, and tons of repetition. When the third one engaged in mindless repetition to the point where it had jokes explicitly calling it out, it was time for a mercy killing.

Michael Caine, as is his occasional wont, greatly enjoyed his paycheck.
posted by delfin at 7:57 AM on April 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

I was someone who never saw the appeal of the film when it was in the cinema, and resisted when a friend rented it. I was a genuine fan of The Avengers and assumed the film would lack the self-aware playfulness that much of the go-go films of the 60s genuinely had. I kept saying I wasn't interested.

"No, no!" he insisted, "Ignore Austin Powers. It's Doctor Evil that makes this a great film!"

My god but that man was right.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 7:59 AM on April 28, 2017

Can we all agree that the first Austin Powers was pretty fun and novel, and the second and third were atrocities that drove the joke into the ground and should never have been made?

I'm not on board for this. Yes, Fat Bastard is awful and unfunny; but the second has Mini-Me (and "Austin caught me in the first act, it's all backwards, what's up with that?" and the third has the utterly glorious Goldmember character and Michael Caine gleefully hamming it up.

They're mixed bags, yes, but so was the first one; their method always was throw a lot of gags at the screen and hope that enough of them stick.

Fully on board with "Dr. Evil is the best character" though.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:02 AM on April 28, 2017 [5 favorites]

Dunno... maybe Scott Evil is the best character.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:09 AM on April 28, 2017 [19 favorites]

This reminds me of the era when friends of mine and I had Verne Troyer's phone number for some reason. I'm not entirely proud of every time I called him, but I did enjoy the first time. I'm pretty sure Troyer enjoyed none of it

We were dicks. Sorry.
posted by emelenjr at 8:14 AM on April 28, 2017

Yeah, Dr. Evil & crew steal the show - those are the quotes and jokes that have been remembered. I've used the "gotta whole bag of shhh with your name on it" bit with my kids (one time, I changed it to "whole bag of no", which prompted them to ask where my bag of yes was), and so on. The second worked for me because of Mini-Me; and Scott Evil is just a gift. There's a lot of humor to be mined from a quasi-competent super-villain surrounded by off-beat henchmen.

The third one was just gross; Goldmember never worked for me as a character, and I felt like the entire thing had overstayed its welcome.

Reading through this, it sounds to me like the first one worked because everyone committed to it; they all knew it was off-beat and risky and weird, but they went after it 110%. I don't think movies like this work without that coming from everyone involved, they get lost in their own corniness without it.
posted by nubs at 8:21 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

It would have been great, I tell ya.

It occurs to me that The Monarch and Dr Venture are both Dr Evil-ish, so maybe The Venture Bros. would scratch that itch.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:44 AM on April 28, 2017 [5 favorites]

As the article mentions, it opened in the UK just after the death of Diana, and that was a weird week in Britain. My younger sister - who was working as a florist, so imagine what she spent the week doing - and I went to see it the day it opened, and it was such a relief to laugh so much. So while 2 & 3 stank, the original was so good, and so welcome to me and sis at that point, I'll always love it.
posted by YoungStencil at 8:44 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

I can't believe it is 20 years old! The entire script was basically catchphrases, one of which I had written on my back for about 2 months because of dumbness.

In the summer of 1999, I was a camp counselor at a fancy sleepaway camp in the Poconos. The theme for color war was James Bond vs. Austin Powers, and I was on the Austin Powers team. On the first day, we all got dressed up in 60s gear, including painting a VW bus and ourselves with flowers and phrases from the movies. Then we spent the rest of the day in a field doing three-legged races, tug-of-war, etc.

I am the whitest person alive and, being 19 at the time, forgot to put sunblock under the paint. That is how I ended up with the words "Oh behave!" burnt onto my back for the rest of the summer. My sunburns take a long time to fade and I think you could still make it out in connect-the-dots with my freckles.
posted by elvissa at 8:50 AM on April 28, 2017 [24 favorites]

The first one came out when I was wrapping up my junior year in high school. My (probably late 20s) cool English teacher got us a bunch of promotional Austin Powers book covers. I was just about to live away from home for the first time, at a residential summer Governor's School program at a tony university in my home state, where I would meet lots and lots of other gay people for the first time in my life. We had a few costume parties that summer, and by the last one a group of gays and I--emboldened by a summer studying philosophy and critical theory and cultural studies--came as Fembots. It was a groovy time, indeed.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 8:54 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

GOOD MIKE MYERS MOVIES

Wayne's World
Austin Powers
So I Married An Axe Murderer

BAD MIKE MYERS MOVIES

everything else
posted by Chrysostom at 9:03 AM on April 28, 2017 [7 favorites]

I found this to be a fascinating comment, by Seth Green (Scott Evil): "... all of my thoughts in respect to this character were to play it deeply sincere. I thought that would be funniest next to Mike's broad character. If you look at me in the movie, I am in a drama."
posted by bitteroldman at 9:31 AM on April 28, 2017 [18 favorites]

The best I can say for the 3rd movie is that its box office failure likely dissuaded Beyoncé from quitting her day job. (Though she did take another stab at wacky comedy a few years later in the abominable Pink Panther re-make. Thankfully that movie stunk up the joint even more.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:32 AM on April 28, 2017

The second movie definitely has its moments, and I say that as someone who wasn't a big fan of the first one (it is probably my least favorite movie that I've seen twice). Rob Lowe as a young Robert Wagner was wonderful.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:14 AM on April 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Just think of the entirety of a film taking place in Dr. Evil's lair where he gets reports back of how is various schemes are working/failing but not a bit of Powers actually on the screen.

So, like the current presidency then?
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:36 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

You gotta admit though, that Tom Cruise as Austin bit was pretty good.
posted by valkane at 11:15 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Rob Lowe as a young Robert Wagner was wonderful.

The series made some excellent casting choices, but that was by far the best one.
posted by The Man from Lardfork at 11:47 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

The best I can say for the 3rd movie is that its box office failure likely dissuaded Beyoncé from quitting her day job.

Man, that kissing scene between Austin and Foxxy Cleopatra (which was such an uninspired name) was so awkward; she seemed so uncomfortable doing it - they should have just not made her a love interest (but god-forbid a man and woman just be friends or associates)
posted by bitteroldman at 11:57 AM on April 28, 2017

(Especially when that man is literally twice her age.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:19 PM on April 28, 2017

The second movie, as a whole, sucks. But there are pieces of brilliance like the Tom Cruise cameo. But NOTHING in the second film came close to anything like Carrie Fisher conducting a therapy session that gave us that beautiful Dr Evil monologue. Nothing like a shorn scrotum.
posted by Ber at 12:29 PM on April 28, 2017

It's breathtaking.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:37 PM on April 28, 2017

I was amazed that the second one did as well as it did - well enough to spawn a third! - because when my sister and I saw it in the theatre the vibe as we filed out afterward was hella dissatisfied.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:30 PM on April 28, 2017

The deleted scenes from the second film are often funnier than what showed up in the standard cut. The scene with Dr Evil riffing on the talk show set had me in stitches. I also loved the clinch scene between both versions of Number Two (especially if you watch the behind the scenes interviews with both Rob Lowe and Robert Urich-- apparently Lowe was a good friend of Urich's daughter, thus they were VERY familiar with one another).
posted by Eikonaut at 2:00 PM on April 28, 2017

You know what, though, Goldmember was perfect for what it was - a movie for immature high schoolers. I went to go see it in the movie theater with a big group of friends when I was 16 and I remember laughing hysterically. I remember my boyfriend laughing so hard at Dr. Evil getting hit in the nuts with the globe that I thought we were going to have to remove him from the theater.

Sometimes a good crotch shot is all you need!
posted by chainsofreedom at 2:21 PM on April 29, 2017