Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery

Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery has Austin (my middle name is Danger) Powers being de-frosted and released back onto the planet from the sixties so that he can battle his main enemy Dr Evil, who was also cryogenically frozen in the sixties.

Dr Evil is also played by Myers, and both are played by Myers with great skill. Myers has plenty of talent!

Austin is an English, debonair, swinging, Carnaby Street hipster; into Mod Chicks and bright sports cars who is outwardly a strangely hairy, free loving, fashion photographer. But he's also an immaculate, if loud, gentleman spy who loves nothing more than to do battle with Dr Evil for God and Country.

But Austin's conflict with a modern English woman, represented by English actress Elizabeth Hurley, provides as much humour as his battles with Dr Death.

Mike Myers has given us most notably Wayne's World (1 and 2), as well as the zany So I Married An Axe Murderer and Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery has essentially the same feel; combining gentle parody with a lot of fun.

There's no disputing the talent of Mike Myers, and Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery is entertaining, even if somehow the formula in his latest film wasn't worked well enough.

The parody in this film is centred on the Swinging Sixties and various James Bond films, including the Casino Royale Bond spoof. So there's a Korean henchman, called this time Random Task rather than Oddjob, who instead of throwing a razor sharp bowler hat, chucks another item of clothing at his adversaries.

In Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery, instead of a fluffy white cat there's a skinned version, and instead of Pussy Galore there's Alotta Fagina!

The film looks fab and has plenty of style, with tons of psychedelic clashes of colour and none too subtle allusions to free sex, plenty of dope and the illusory freedom that was meant to emerge from the various "summers of love", but unfortunately Myer's plastic, self conscious style of humour doesn't translate well for the nineties'; at least when he portrays the sixties as being as silly as they are in Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery.

We've become a little too jaded to relax as much as Myers has asked us to become when viewing this film. Sexually transmitted diseases, two generations of unemployment, the Vietnam War, millions of mini skirts and nineties cynicism have blunted the impact of Jean Shrimpton's bare legs at Flemington, and thirty years hasn't been long enough to turn a film centred on the sixties into a successful costume drama (or comedy).

And what better example of nineties cynicism could you imagine than a particular image of Hugh Grant's penis in a limo that swings into mind, when Elizabeth Hurley chomps on a bent sausage, which is meant to be the penis of Austin Danger Powers. But that's unfair I suppose.