Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY is the first in the comic series starring this bodacious 1960s spy played by the hilarious Mike Myers. Decked out in the gaudiest mod attire--ruffled shirts, tight-fitting candy-colored suits, horn-rimmed glasses, and prosthetic teeth--Austin Powers is anything but subtle. His near-constant exclamations of "Groovy, Baby," accompanied an uncandid flash of his flirtatious smile, only add to his wonderfully exaggerated hipster persona. Plotwise, Austin Powers and his enemy Dr. Evil (also played by Myers) awake from 30 years of frozen, cryogenic sleep to find themselves in the year 1997. A conniving Dr. Evil plots a reign of terror and mass destruction, but finds that his ideas and methods are a bit out of date. Our hero encounters a similar dilemma, realizing that he is definitely behind the times. A series of well-meaning though bumbling efforts to thwart the insidious Dr. Evil keep Austin Powers and his devastatingly beautiful partner Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley) hard at work as they travel from London to Las Vegas. With this tongue-in-cheek send up of James Bond spy films and 1960s cliches, director Jay Roach compliments Myer's over-the-top performance with a lighthearted soundtrack, fun photography, and amusingly retro sets.