Shagadelic, Baby!

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 5, 1999 | by Catherine Edwards

Austin Powers is back, groovier than ever. The toothy (and oddly toothsome) British spy must save the world from destruction, if only to make R safe for commercial tie-ins.

The swinging British spy from the sixties has done it again. International Man of Mystery Austin Powers not only has made another movie, he has transformed himself into a cultural phenomenon.

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me opened June 11 nationwide after weeks (that seemed like months) of fanfare. Groovy photographer by day and secret agent by night, Powers was cryogenized in the sixties and reanimated in the nineties, to the delight of filmgoers who flocked to see the first Powers film. In the sequel, Austin is happily honeymooning with his new wife, only to get an explosive surprise relegating him back to his single status. His archnemesis, Dr. Evil, steals Austin's "mojo"--his life force and lively libido--requiring Powers to time travel back to the sixties to retrieve it and to save the world from destruction.

Saturday Night Live alumnus Mike Myers (whose first feature film, Wayne's World, and its sequel, also were hits) wrote and produced The Spy Who Shagged Me, which has him, Peter Sellers-like, playing three roles -- Powers, the maniacal monocled Dr. Evil and Evil's kilted Scottish henchman, Mr. Fat Bastard. Heather Graham (Boogie Nights) vamps as Powers' CIA counterpart, the seductive Felicity Shagwell.

"It's so genius how all the phrases he made up, like `Yeah, Baby! Groovy!' and all that stuff really permeates our culture now," Graham recently told MTV, seemingly oblivious to the fact that people really did say "Yeah, Baby! Groovy!" 35 years ago. Never mind. Hipsters such as singer/songwriter Elvis Costello, who makes a cameo appearance (with Burt Bacharach), love Myers' spoof. "He really got the English humor down, but he does it in a way that everybody in the world can appreciate" said Costello.

The film's worldwide appeal is no accident. Myers and his exhaustive marketing team have stopped at nothing to promote Powers, forging tie-ins with Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Volkswagen and Heineken. Indeed, Myers wrote the products into his script. Dr. Evil's headquarters is a chrome Starbuck's coffee shop atop the needle in Seattle, a reference British fans will relish: Starbuck's purchase of the U.K.'s Seattle's Best chain of coffee shops certainly smacks of world domination.

Just how ubiquitous is Austin Powers? He's all over the World Wide Web, plastered on the sides of buses ... just about everywhere a media buyer can lease space. People who haven't seen the films know the persona. Here's Powers sporting a milk mustache in a "Got milk?" ad. There's Powers unveiling a Virgin Boeing 747 -- Virgin Shaglantic -- its fuselage sporting a larger-than-life painting of the toothy spy (the campaign includes billboards with Powers proclaiming, "There is only one virgin on this billboard, baby!")

Peter Bradshaw, film critic for the London Guardian, is amazed that Myers can dish out such crass humor -- the word "shag" in the movie's rifle, for example, is a Britishism for sex. "It's pretty crude," Bradshaw tells Insight, "but his humor and dialogue are so clever that he gets away with it." The Singapore Board of Film Censors was less amused, changing the film's title to The Spy Who Shioked Me (shioked means good or nice). The board eventually decided "shagged" was acceptable after all -- perhaps hoping the "No Sex Please, We're British" sensibility isn't completely passe.

Born in Canada to English parents from Liverpool (home of the Beatles), Myers grew up during the golden era of spy thrillers -- watching Sean Connery as James Bond and Roger Moore in The Saint and The Pretenders (remember Moore tooling around the south of France, beautiful women basking in his virility as he downshifts his Aston Martin?). Myers' spy is a whole other animal, however, a combination of Bond, Benny Hill and the classic American stereotype of Brits with bad teeth. "He is everything right and everything wrong about the sixties in Britain," says Jeremy Clarke, writer for What's On, a London entertainment guide.

Concerned parents may want to attend the PG-13 film with their children not only to understand this cultural phenomenon but also to monitor the movie's sexual innuendoes. David Irving, chairman of undergraduate studies in film and television at New York University, anticipates attending with his teenage daughter because they connect on the film's humor. "We constantly imitate him together," he tells Insight, "and I think that, sadly, teenagers really learn everything earlier these days." But Myers gives a sweet and impish tone to his performance that accommodates ribald humor -- allowing the risque jokes to seem like good clean fun.

Austin Powers' biggest competitor for top billing at the box office this summer no doubt will be Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Master-marketer Myers predicted as much -- the film is full of Star Wars references. Every moviemaker dreams of creating a phenomenon such as Star Wars. In an increasingly crowded market, Myers may have found the perfect formula -- sharpen the humor, exaggerate popular stereotypes and shamelessly promote.