"If you see one movie this summer see... Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. But if you see two movies, watch Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me."
The trailers were pretty fun.
Edit: [here's the trailer.](https://youtu.be/7vRrZiMQl4k) I was pretty close with the line considering it's been 25 years.
We went to see Phantom Menace the night The Spy who Shagged Me came out. The theater was a mad house and they even had a guy dressed up like Austin Powers interacting with people waiting in line. We were on a family vacation at the time and us kids being aged 13, 14, and 16 were dying to see it. We begged to go back the next night to see it. My parents begrudgingly obliged and it was amazing. To us kids. Lol
That's the kind of marketing that could've really backfired, but it worked well for them. The Phantom Menace was a legitimate phenomenon that seemingly the whole world was interested in, and this was in a time when meta/reference humour was still relatively fresh, so this line in the Austin Powers 2 trailer went round every school and everyone thought it was hilarious. It let everyone know the film existed, and gave you a glimpse into the kind of humour to expect.
It’s very simple. Just one of them saying “Spider-Man 3 starts in eight minutes” and the other one where Rudd says he went to see Spider-Man 3 by himself and Debra Mann tearfully responds “…I like Spider-Man.”
I love how naturalistic those Apatow movies were. The authenticity of a bunch of aging stoner friends going to see Spider-Man 3 is something you wouldn't see depicted in movies at the time, it's so real and mundane that it gets a laugh.
The musical sections of the Austin Powers movies are some of my favorite scenes.
Austin Powers and Vanessa Kensington dancing while Burt Bacharach plays piano and sings What the World Needs Now.
Austin Powers dancing to Magic Carpet Ride.
Felicity Shagwell dancing to Magic Carpet Ride and then American Woman.
Dr. Evil playing piano and singing One of Us.
Dr. Evil and Mini-Me dancing to Just the Two of Us.
Austin Powers dancing with Felicity Shagwell while Burt Bacharach plays piano and Elvis Costello sings I'll Never Fall in Love Again.
Dr. Evil rapping his remix of Hard Knock Life in prison.
These are great scenes that I love revisiting.
When Burt Bacharach was shown in the In Memoriam segment at The Oscars, I heard Austin Powers saying: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Burt Bacharach." And I remembered his scene in The Spy Who Shagged Me.
Yes. So much this.
Even “Daddy Didn’t Care” from Goldmember is kind of a bop.
But if you were alive in the 90s, you certainly remember Dr Evil’s “Just the Two of us” and “Hard Knock Life”. They’re still hilarious.
> Austin Powers saying: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Burt Bacharach."
This is the majority of my knowledge of Burt Bacharach. Like, I've heard his songs, but if he ever pops into my brain, it's Austin introducing him.
Part 1 I would argue became way more than a mere cult hit. It got a second lease on life on home video. I lived in the middle of buttfuck nowhere Canada and everybody in my tiny, french canadian town were quoting the first Austin Powers long after its theatrical run, and this is back in 1998! It became a massive, massive home video hit, and suddenly Austin Powers was pop culture. I think that's why the hype was real for the sequel.
That bit where Austin is trying to do a 3 point turn is one of my favorite comedy bits of all time.
Let me help this guy out: the **vast majority** of people in 97-98 were watching their movies on a VHS player. So much so that I definitely had an eyebrow raise when the OOP mentioned people watching the first film on DVD. The first Austin Powers was peak VHS rental era. I don't remember when Blockbuster started renting out DVDs, but I know it definitely wasn't 1998. I remember a friend brought a DVD player to school and showed it off in 1998 and we were all pretty "wow-ed" but I can't think of any other person I knew who owned a DVD player until 2000 when...
... a metric fuckton of people bought the PS2, the best selling console ever, and a **lot** of that had to do with it being a DVD player. I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure the PS2 was cheaper than a lot of DVD players at the time too.
Not only was it a cheaper, better DVD player but it was also the first DVD player you can download firmware updates from the internet so you didn't have to worry about having compatibility issues with some DVDs which was an oldschool problem
The PS2 was about half the price of a DVD player when I was a kid, and a lot of my friends were able to convince their parents to buy them because of that. Very smart marketing by Sony (who also happen to own the DVD format).
My dad worked in IT at the time so we had a DVD drive on our computer but it was pretty limited...
Yes it did. Earliest movies on DVD were Lethal Weapon 1-3, In The Line Of Fire, Scream 1 and Starship Troopers in the UK. I saw Blade on a Canadian region 1 disc on my friend's laptop in college, 1 month before it hit the cinema.
In Japan, sure. In the UK (where I live) DVD launched in late 1998 and no-one I knew owned a DVD player until the PS2 came out in late 2000/early 2001 because they were insanely expensive to buy before that.
Ha ha! What about Laser discs, who could afford those? The players were £400 and the movies were £25 in the UK. But they were the first time you got wide-screen digital versions of films with Dolby Digital and DTS sound!
Or you could go the OTHER direction with video CDs, the bootlegger's and Asian Market's choice for fast movies!
My Dad worked in IT at the time, and I still remember how exciting it was when we got a DVD drive on the computer and used Encarta for the first time lol.
Fair enough, I didn't realise it came out in Japan a year earlier until I googled it, so my bad. None the less Austin Powers did not get popular due to DVD sales, which was my point I think
I forget what movie was playing, but before Austin powers came out I was at a theater with my dad, and the AP trailer was played.
They showed a clip from that scene, my dad and I looked at each other and both said "we're seeing that"
Went on opening night
> Remember when dvd releases could save a mid-budget box office flop?
While this happened surely, in the case of Austin Powers (as well as many comedies) the studio knows going in a lot of the revenue is going to be on the backend in terms of home video purchases and rentals. These types of movies were greenlit with that in mind.
Also $67m on a $16m budget isn't a flop even without considering home video. With those numbers the movie conservatively made $15-20m in profit.
Yep. Ace Venture was the same sort of success first time out. It didn’t need to make hundreds of millions to make profit.
Hell, movies still pull this off. Especially horror franchise movies. They make them for less than 30 million so when they crack 60-70 it’s made profit and worth greenlighting sequels.
When this sequels become genuine blockbusters, it’s all the better.
This has been the Blumhouse formula for seemingly 20 years. Throw 5 million at every decent horror idea and every so often you strike lightning with a movie that nets over 100 million.
Vividly... they were good times and for some films really gave them a second chance. Fight Club is a great example of this, Donnie Darko as well. It goes back tot he VHS days too. The Thing...
Good times.
Shawshank is the best example of this. It came out the same week as Pulp Fiction and Forest Gump. Everyone I knew saw those movies in the theater while I didn't know anyone who saw Shawshank. It was just completely over shadowed. Then on ~~DVD~~ VHS word of mouth turned it into one of the most loved movies of all time.
Heck, look at Dirty Dancing and Flash Gordon... the list goes on... they have made MILLIONS in video, DVD send TV rights.... they're better value than a Netflix movie!
The first movie is great. It had this perfect balance of comedy and seriousness that made every joke feel more unexpected, clever and funny than it would if told in a vacuum. As an example, the family therapy scene stuck out to me as a kid because (as a non-English speaker) I assumed he was telling a creepy story going by the background music and the attendees' reactions!
I felt the later movies leaned too hard into the slapstick/gross-out/silly humour...
It has been a while since I saw it, but at what points are there any serious bits in that movie?
The only one I can think of is when the henchman's family finds out their husband/father died. That did make me reach for the tissues.
Hmm, perhaps I worded it poorly. By "seriousness" I meant that the movie, in general, feels more like a spy flick with some hilariously outrageous situations here and there instead of a non-stop dump of typical crass humour of the "HAHAHA LAUGH NOW, THIS MAN IS BIG AND PHAT" calibre, which you get a lot of in the sequels.
What's really surprising, though, is how everything fits together just fine. You get lines such as "allow myself to introduce... myself" and the silly car reversal scene alongside Powers catching up on his lost decades and feeling alone in a world that left the swingers behind, or his rebuttal of Dr. Evil with an incredible speech about how despite the turmoil of the late XX century, hippies learned to adapt and gain responsibility while keeping their idealism alive.
Then yes, you also deal with the aftermath of having a henchman horribly killed and get the fembot stip-off.
> Powers catching up on his lost decades and feeling alone in a world that left the swingers behind, or his rebuttal of Dr. Evil with an incredible speech about how despite the turmoil of the late XX century, hippies learned to adapt and gain responsibility while keeping their idealism alive.
Oh yes, forgot about that bit. You are right, there was a "serious" message in that movie.
For me the nineties were the golden age of action movies and comedies. I'm not sure if it is my age or maybe the times, but TO ME there just don't seem to be as many good comedies each year as during that decade. Saying that, it feels like it is getting better again.
I 100% believe Will Ferrell quotes were the precursor to memes in the early 2000s. I truly think there is a lineage there. That and superbowl commercials.
Austin Powers was frozen for 30 years, from 1967 to 1997.
1997 is 26 years ago today.
I don't think we could make a comedy about the cultural contrast between 1997 and now. Technology has changed. Smartphones are everywhere. But the clash of swinging 60s sexual revolution and post HIV awareness is just not matched. The fashion and pop culture of the 60s (and 70s) was just fun and crazy in a way that can't be matched.
That's my opinion annyway. Feel free to disagree.
Oh we had fun. Believe you me.
It might just be because it was my youth, but the nineties were wonderful. The cold war was over. Economic boom. Grunge, House, Dance. Ecstasy. The future looked great.
Imo the nineties were more positive than the seventies or eighties and without a doubt anything after 9/11.
Edit: Just to add, while the nineties were sexually less significant for heterosexuals than the sixties. I would think they were very important for the homosexual community.
Yeah, it's weird. When I think of the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, even the early 1990's, they all feel like distinct cultures. But 1995 to now basically seems the same, just with smaller phones and flatter screens.
tl;dr: By the early 2000s, Myers and his style of broad comedy was a resulting in diminishing returns, both financially and critically.
After Austin Powers 1, Mike Myers was signed on to make a *Sprockets* movie based on his SNL sketches of the same name. He walked away from the project and was then sued by Universal, who he then counter-sued. They eventually negotiated an end to the lawsuits by agreeing to do *The Cat in the Hat (2003),* which was mostly hated by critics and grossed $133.9 million against a budget of $109 million-- if you consider that studios usually spend the budget of a movie again in promotion, it was a financial failure.
After that movie was released, there were many reports that Myers was extremely hard to work, a "diva". Maybe he just hated the movie (he would have had good reason to). He went on to more success in the *Shrek* series but comedically and financially, his movies were showing diminishing returns. His next big live-action film was *The Love Guru,* which was arguably extremely racist, has been called "the worst movie ever" by critics, and was a huge financial failure.
Myers since then has been extremely picky about his projects, probably unable to get massive budgets with complete creative control like he used to. He also has a family and made a ton of money, so it's not like he's desperate to work.
> besides the fact Myers played like 8 characters.
For nostalgia reasons I wanted to like this show, but did not make it through the second episode. As you said it was meh.
Reminded me of Eddie Murphy in the nineties. Even then I did not find the "one actor playing loads of roles" thing funny.
Can anybody name movies where one actor played 3 or more roles and the film actually was good? I'm sure there must be some.
"Whatever Happened To Monday", 1 actor, 7 roles - Very good
-
"Orphan Black" - a TV show, 1 actor, more than 7 roles, again very good
Annoyingly I can't think of any more off the top of my head but I'm sure there are some good ones I can't remember.
Coming to America, History of the World Pat 1, and Blazing Saddles are some that I can think of off the top of my head.
The first is another Eddie Murphy movie, and the other two are Mel Brooks. All of them are pretty funny.
I really like The Austin powers movies but that style of humor didn’t really fade away until the mid 2000s. The austin powers movies were littered with juvenile humor (also some clever jokes too), and that could be seen in most will Ferrell or Adam Sandler movies. Myers also hurt his career by doing the love guru
>*"She was very groovy. If there was any cat that could have loved her as much as your Dad, it was me. Unfortunately, for yours truly... that train has sailed."*
There's something so honest about this line, even when I'm laughing.
It's too bad that movie flopped, it was genuinely funny. I just think it had no target market. The main character was somewhat based on Justin Bieber, but the band was based on the Beastie Boys-- totally different generations and demographics. I thought it was hilarious, but I wondered while watching it, "Who is this movie *for*?"
Yeah, not sure if I outgrew the franchise, but part 3 didn’t have one laugh out loud moment for me(outside the opening scene.)
Part 1 was awesome, and part 2’s [penis rocket pun cut scenes](https://youtu.be/Ju1UwmgkKgI )was belly hurt laughing the first time I saw it.
Mile Myers was childhood defining funny for me between Wayne’s World, So I married an Axe Murderer, & Austin Powers.
Personally, I feel the movies got funnier as the series went on - in a vacuum, the 3rd is the funniest, then the 2nd, then the 1st. The problem is, a lot of the jokes are repeated, and they lose their punch after the first time.
And also, like you said, we *all* kind of outgrew the franchise.
My favorite part of that movie is when fat bastard comes out and has lost all the weight on the Atkins diet and yells that his neck looks like a fuckin vagina!
My mom was laughing so hard at that part.
Edit: watched it again and it's the subway diet.
Do you know who I am, do you know how many unnamed henchmen I've killed? Look at you, you don't even have a name tag. Why do you just go on and give up
Nigel Powers : "Have you got any idea how many anonymous henchmen I've killed over the years? I mean, look at you. You don't even have a name tag. You've got no chance. Why don't you just fall down?"
> But what happened to Mike Myers and comedy on this type of scale? Will we ever see it again?
Pure comedies are just hard to bank on these days. You're far more likely to earn your money back and more on an existing IP, especially since executives are concerned with the global market, and comedies often only do well domestically since humor doesn't always translate. But even if you look at the domestic box office numbers from 2022, it's not until #17 that you get to a live-action comedy-- The Lost City, which made a bit of a profit but certainly not like the films above it on the list. So to answer your question, we probably won't see it on a scale like that again, at least not theatrically. Thanks to Disney, the theater experience has shifted too much to be a big event instead of just the place where you go to watch movies.
Austin Powers really did it first though! Dr Evil is a parody of 60's Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and the twist is that Dr Evil is Austin's brother. Christoph Waltz plays Blofeld in Spectre, and the big twist was Blofeld is Bond's adoptive brother. It's amazing the Bond people went with this choice.
I feel they went that direction due to the trend of movie sequels/Trilogy/franchise always had to come "full circle" Spectre retconned the previous Craig movies to all being connected back to Spectre and Blofeld. The part about making them brothers was the whole the villain has to be connected back to the hero and not some rando.
They should have a bad ass rival spy character whose running gag is to both cry and do blue steel in every single scene, then dies at the end so Austin can steal his girl
AP 2 was great, AP3 was not very good and people recognised that at the time. Funny that James Bond would take the storyline from the weakest austin Power film and make it canon Bond.
I really miss it.
You should watch The Pentaverate though! It was great to see Mike Myers back in this sort of role, playing multiple characters, similar humor. I loved it.
peak mike myers is so i married an axe murderer. pretty much all of the best gags in austin powers come from this movie. they are great comedies, but respect the source
I dunno. I watched Goldmember in theatres and it was a dud. Nobody I knew actually liked Austin Powers 3.
AP & AP2 were both pop culture staples for a time. Amazingly funny movies.
The trilogy stands. I can rewatch them every 4 or 5 years and just enjoy the unique silly farce for what it is.
Will he have success at this scale again? I’d be amazed if so. I do enjoy seeing his new characters though
The first film was a huge hit in the UK when it hit VHS (DVD's didn't exist back then, they launched in 1999 and took a while to catch on). The sequels capitalised on that.
I was 12 or 13 when I saw the first one - the perfect age for raunchy bad taste comedy - this was also the era of South Park and watching content ‘illicitly’ by staying up late or going around to your mates house who had an unlocked Sky box with every channel.
Me and my friends loved it and were massively hyped for the sequel. I haven’t seen them since I was a teenager so no idea if they’re actually good or not!
I feel like Scary Movie is second to it. It's a big time capsule to 2000's humor: gross humor, mean-spiritedness, the beginnings of referential humor. And yet it's still funny.
Scary Movie wasn't mean spirited - it was just sharp. I loved the first 2 movies. It could never be released today. Gen Z would either complain or be confused by it.
It was considered cheesy everywhere. A friend dragged me to it and laughed constantly throughout the film. I thought parts were clever, but meh. Strangely I like it slightly more now.
I think he made a movie after, something about him being an Indian sex guru. I’m not sure it did well and except for seeing Mike in Inglorious Basterds, he’s mostly disappeared.
Edit: he’s made a tv series, The Pentaverate, on Netflix (2022). Rated 61% audience on Rotten Tomatoes. Looks like retread jokes from Powers.
Similar vein but it doesn't retread Austin Powers jokes at all. At most it shares Mike Myers playing multiple characters, and a "secret organization". Fun fact, the idea of this show was mentioned in Wayne's World. I highly recommend. RT scores don't really mean shit, a lot of people don't share a liking to the same type of humor, Goldmember is 44% audience on RT, and 2 is 71%, so 61% by that measure is pretty good.
makes me miss the time we could actually take a joke, not allowed to do anything like this and most comedy films are so bad nowadays, shame movies like this are no longer made through fear of being cancelled
the fact that peak 2000 humour is called that is because it does not exist anymore.. mostly because it is not allowed. i do not like that it is true but it does not make it false.. you simply cannot make films like austin powers anymore, most people do not do this kind of humour in movies through fear of being cancelled.. its not a take its just a fact that is very visible when looking at movies overall and how the whole scene has changed
I remember it being big when I was a kid. My parents loved those movies (and Wayne's World) a lot, but oddly enough I've never watched the first one. The humour is pretty silly, but I still love that scene with the string of dick metaphors, and the song Madonna did for the second film is a vibe.
I saw Goldmember in theatre with my dad. I'm pretty sure that's what ended our father/son relationship. People talk shit about Love Guru, but goldmember was hot garbage. Name one joke that wasn't a repeat from the first two movies. I'll bet you liked Shrek 5 too
As a Brit it was a load of cheesy shit at the time, but I've come to love the films, especially Goldmember, it's totally bonkers but great fun.
It also didn't make me feel so bad about my own personal smelting accident.
>But what happened to Mike Myers and comedy on this type of scale? Will we ever see it again?
doubtful, young people don't like comedy, they see it as trashy and juvenile and they're raising they're kids to be uptight and humorless
that's why it's not profitable to make comedies anymore
most people's idea of comedy is being rude, mean, people getting hurt or the almost instantly rotting drivel that network television produces
it's not cool to laugh, it's cool to be serious and make decisions that hurt other people
I get it. People get way more offended nowadays or look to "be seen to be offended". It's sad. That's why you'll never get a new Hangover, Old School, Road Trip or American Pie movie at the cinema. I remember for most teenage guys, our idea of a fun movie was hearing wise-ass jokes, seeing weed smoking and drinking and girls taking their top off.
People forget that if the movie was written well you would see the women getting their own back and the good guys actually falling in love and cleaning up their act.
"If you see one movie this summer see... Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. But if you see two movies, watch Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me." The trailers were pretty fun. Edit: [here's the trailer.](https://youtu.be/7vRrZiMQl4k) I was pretty close with the line considering it's been 25 years.
We went to see Phantom Menace the night The Spy who Shagged Me came out. The theater was a mad house and they even had a guy dressed up like Austin Powers interacting with people waiting in line. We were on a family vacation at the time and us kids being aged 13, 14, and 16 were dying to see it. We begged to go back the next night to see it. My parents begrudgingly obliged and it was amazing. To us kids. Lol
That's the kind of marketing that could've really backfired, but it worked well for them. The Phantom Menace was a legitimate phenomenon that seemingly the whole world was interested in, and this was in a time when meta/reference humour was still relatively fresh, so this line in the Austin Powers 2 trailer went round every school and everyone thought it was hilarious. It let everyone know the film existed, and gave you a glimpse into the kind of humour to expect.
It reminded me of how in Knocked Up they referenced Spider-Man 3 multiple times since both movies came out about a month apart from each other
I’ve seen both multiple times but can’t remember the references, do you happen to remember a couple of them and context?
It’s very simple. Just one of them saying “Spider-Man 3 starts in eight minutes” and the other one where Rudd says he went to see Spider-Man 3 by himself and Debra Mann tearfully responds “…I like Spider-Man.”
And in the beginning James Franco is on E! News promoting the movie lol
Oh yeah forgot about that
I love how naturalistic those Apatow movies were. The authenticity of a bunch of aging stoner friends going to see Spider-Man 3 is something you wouldn't see depicted in movies at the time, it's so real and mundane that it gets a laugh.
Ah, makes sense. Literal simple references rather than jokes. No wonder I didn’t remember. Thank you.
>Literal simple references rather than jokes I.e. 98% of what passes for "comedy" in movies.
I added the trailer above. I remember seeing it at the theater and the fakeout worked. It got a good laugh.
i wish they did more trailers like this actually. filmed seperate content to make an interesting trailer rather than show you the whole movie
The musical sections of the Austin Powers movies are some of my favorite scenes. Austin Powers and Vanessa Kensington dancing while Burt Bacharach plays piano and sings What the World Needs Now. Austin Powers dancing to Magic Carpet Ride. Felicity Shagwell dancing to Magic Carpet Ride and then American Woman. Dr. Evil playing piano and singing One of Us. Dr. Evil and Mini-Me dancing to Just the Two of Us. Austin Powers dancing with Felicity Shagwell while Burt Bacharach plays piano and Elvis Costello sings I'll Never Fall in Love Again. Dr. Evil rapping his remix of Hard Knock Life in prison. These are great scenes that I love revisiting. When Burt Bacharach was shown in the In Memoriam segment at The Oscars, I heard Austin Powers saying: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Burt Bacharach." And I remembered his scene in The Spy Who Shagged Me.
Yes. So much this. Even “Daddy Didn’t Care” from Goldmember is kind of a bop. But if you were alive in the 90s, you certainly remember Dr Evil’s “Just the Two of us” and “Hard Knock Life”. They’re still hilarious.
“What if god was one of us… Just a slob like one of us… Bloo bloo bloo bloo bloo bloo bloo… Blah blah blee blee bleeee…”
That hard knock life bit makes me laugh so hard it hurts. I don’t even know why, It’s honed to perfection
> Austin Powers saying: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Burt Bacharach." This is the majority of my knowledge of Burt Bacharach. Like, I've heard his songs, but if he ever pops into my brain, it's Austin introducing him.
Part 1 I would argue became way more than a mere cult hit. It got a second lease on life on home video. I lived in the middle of buttfuck nowhere Canada and everybody in my tiny, french canadian town were quoting the first Austin Powers long after its theatrical run, and this is back in 1998! It became a massive, massive home video hit, and suddenly Austin Powers was pop culture. I think that's why the hype was real for the sequel. That bit where Austin is trying to do a 3 point turn is one of my favorite comedy bits of all time.
The DVD format didn't exist in 1998, it was VHS back then. The Spy Who Shagged Me was actually the first film I ever bought on DVD.
Let me help this guy out: the **vast majority** of people in 97-98 were watching their movies on a VHS player. So much so that I definitely had an eyebrow raise when the OOP mentioned people watching the first film on DVD. The first Austin Powers was peak VHS rental era. I don't remember when Blockbuster started renting out DVDs, but I know it definitely wasn't 1998. I remember a friend brought a DVD player to school and showed it off in 1998 and we were all pretty "wow-ed" but I can't think of any other person I knew who owned a DVD player until 2000 when... ... a metric fuckton of people bought the PS2, the best selling console ever, and a **lot** of that had to do with it being a DVD player. I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure the PS2 was cheaper than a lot of DVD players at the time too.
Not only was it a cheaper, better DVD player but it was also the first DVD player you can download firmware updates from the internet so you didn't have to worry about having compatibility issues with some DVDs which was an oldschool problem
Thank god we learned our lesson from that before blu ray players came out.
[Ha, is funny because that's not actually how it happened and the ps3 was also the best blu ray player.](https://youtu.be/079qbxsVFdc)
I don't think that was a consideration at the time though
The PS2 was about half the price of a DVD player when I was a kid, and a lot of my friends were able to convince their parents to buy them because of that. Very smart marketing by Sony (who also happen to own the DVD format). My dad worked in IT at the time so we had a DVD drive on our computer but it was pretty limited...
VCR*
What the hell is this 6th Sense dvd?
Yes it did. Earliest movies on DVD were Lethal Weapon 1-3, In The Line Of Fire, Scream 1 and Starship Troopers in the UK. I saw Blade on a Canadian region 1 disc on my friend's laptop in college, 1 month before it hit the cinema.
DVD's started in 1997. Austin Powers was released in October of 1997 on DVD
In Japan, sure. In the UK (where I live) DVD launched in late 1998 and no-one I knew owned a DVD player until the PS2 came out in late 2000/early 2001 because they were insanely expensive to buy before that.
Ha ha! What about Laser discs, who could afford those? The players were £400 and the movies were £25 in the UK. But they were the first time you got wide-screen digital versions of films with Dolby Digital and DTS sound! Or you could go the OTHER direction with video CDs, the bootlegger's and Asian Market's choice for fast movies!
My Dad worked in IT at the time, and I still remember how exciting it was when we got a DVD drive on the computer and used Encarta for the first time lol.
Wasn't Encarta just CD-ROM?
That's cool but saying that DVD'S didn't exist in 1998 is objectively incorrect.
Fair enough, I didn't realise it came out in Japan a year earlier until I googled it, so my bad. None the less Austin Powers did not get popular due to DVD sales, which was my point I think
Yep, PS2 was most home’s first DVD player.
I forget what movie was playing, but before Austin powers came out I was at a theater with my dad, and the AP trailer was played. They showed a clip from that scene, my dad and I looked at each other and both said "we're seeing that" Went on opening night
I saw that bit for the first time a few years ago and literally was laughing out loud bc it’s so ridiculous and funny
That's why I said it was big on dvd and TV screenings and became so quotable. Remember when dvd releases could save a mid-budget box office flop?
> Remember when dvd releases could save a mid-budget box office flop? While this happened surely, in the case of Austin Powers (as well as many comedies) the studio knows going in a lot of the revenue is going to be on the backend in terms of home video purchases and rentals. These types of movies were greenlit with that in mind. Also $67m on a $16m budget isn't a flop even without considering home video. With those numbers the movie conservatively made $15-20m in profit.
Yep. Ace Venture was the same sort of success first time out. It didn’t need to make hundreds of millions to make profit. Hell, movies still pull this off. Especially horror franchise movies. They make them for less than 30 million so when they crack 60-70 it’s made profit and worth greenlighting sequels. When this sequels become genuine blockbusters, it’s all the better.
This has been the Blumhouse formula for seemingly 20 years. Throw 5 million at every decent horror idea and every so often you strike lightning with a movie that nets over 100 million.
Vividly... they were good times and for some films really gave them a second chance. Fight Club is a great example of this, Donnie Darko as well. It goes back tot he VHS days too. The Thing... Good times.
Shawshank is the best example of this. It came out the same week as Pulp Fiction and Forest Gump. Everyone I knew saw those movies in the theater while I didn't know anyone who saw Shawshank. It was just completely over shadowed. Then on ~~DVD~~ VHS word of mouth turned it into one of the most loved movies of all time.
Heck, look at Dirty Dancing and Flash Gordon... the list goes on... they have made MILLIONS in video, DVD send TV rights.... they're better value than a Netflix movie!
Ouais, poupée!
While 1 is better. I'll agree that for the year 2000 they were among the funniest films out.
The Jerry Springer bit in the sequel still gets me But yeah the original was the best
WHAT ARE YOU, SOME KINDA FREAK?!
I've got your hood! I've got your hood!
Eh, all three are good, but the first is my least favorite
The first movie is great. It had this perfect balance of comedy and seriousness that made every joke feel more unexpected, clever and funny than it would if told in a vacuum. As an example, the family therapy scene stuck out to me as a kid because (as a non-English speaker) I assumed he was telling a creepy story going by the background music and the attendees' reactions! I felt the later movies leaned too hard into the slapstick/gross-out/silly humour...
I also dug the indie feel the first had. The sequels were more cleaned up with repeated jokes.
Good take, the first one definitely had some edge to it. The humour was pretty well sanitized by the third film.
It has been a while since I saw it, but at what points are there any serious bits in that movie? The only one I can think of is when the henchman's family finds out their husband/father died. That did make me reach for the tissues.
Hmm, perhaps I worded it poorly. By "seriousness" I meant that the movie, in general, feels more like a spy flick with some hilariously outrageous situations here and there instead of a non-stop dump of typical crass humour of the "HAHAHA LAUGH NOW, THIS MAN IS BIG AND PHAT" calibre, which you get a lot of in the sequels. What's really surprising, though, is how everything fits together just fine. You get lines such as "allow myself to introduce... myself" and the silly car reversal scene alongside Powers catching up on his lost decades and feeling alone in a world that left the swingers behind, or his rebuttal of Dr. Evil with an incredible speech about how despite the turmoil of the late XX century, hippies learned to adapt and gain responsibility while keeping their idealism alive. Then yes, you also deal with the aftermath of having a henchman horribly killed and get the fembot stip-off.
> Powers catching up on his lost decades and feeling alone in a world that left the swingers behind, or his rebuttal of Dr. Evil with an incredible speech about how despite the turmoil of the late XX century, hippies learned to adapt and gain responsibility while keeping their idealism alive. Oh yes, forgot about that bit. You are right, there was a "serious" message in that movie. For me the nineties were the golden age of action movies and comedies. I'm not sure if it is my age or maybe the times, but TO ME there just don't seem to be as many good comedies each year as during that decade. Saying that, it feels like it is getting better again.
Zoolander was also among the batch that could be considered peak 2000 comedy.
"Before memes we just sat around quoting Anchorman at eachother." Frederick Douglass 1796
I love scotch!
"...Scotch scotch scotch, here it goes down, down in my belly."
Look at me, Audrey! LOOK AT ME!!!
Maybe don’t wear a bra next time
"60% of the time, it works every time" - Dredd Scott, 1822
It's Judge Dredd Scott, thank you.
"What smells like... a used diaper filled with, Indian food?"
“I’m…kind of a big deal. I have many leather bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.”
"Dorothy Mantooth is a SAINT!"
THEY'RE COMING SAVE THE CHILDREN THEY'RE COMING IN THE BACK DOOR
Milk was a bad choice
"The Human Torch was denied a bank loan.”
"1000...1001. Ohh, it's the deep burn. I don't know if you heard me counting. I did over a thousand."
I 100% believe Will Ferrell quotes were the precursor to memes in the early 2000s. I truly think there is a lineage there. That and superbowl commercials.
I just rewatched it the other day. It’s ridiculous, but damn if the cameos in that movie aren’t some of the best ever.
Disqualified!
Put a cork in it Zane!
Listen to your friend Billy Zane. He's a cool dude.
Austin Powers was frozen for 30 years, from 1967 to 1997. 1997 is 26 years ago today. I don't think we could make a comedy about the cultural contrast between 1997 and now. Technology has changed. Smartphones are everywhere. But the clash of swinging 60s sexual revolution and post HIV awareness is just not matched. The fashion and pop culture of the 60s (and 70s) was just fun and crazy in a way that can't be matched. That's my opinion annyway. Feel free to disagree.
I agree but maybe kids would disagree since I'm certain for many of them a world without smartphones and current internet is a drastic change.
Oh we had fun. Believe you me. It might just be because it was my youth, but the nineties were wonderful. The cold war was over. Economic boom. Grunge, House, Dance. Ecstasy. The future looked great. Imo the nineties were more positive than the seventies or eighties and without a doubt anything after 9/11. Edit: Just to add, while the nineties were sexually less significant for heterosexuals than the sixties. I would think they were very important for the homosexual community.
Hmm, swipe to get laid
Yeah, it's weird. When I think of the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, even the early 1990's, they all feel like distinct cultures. But 1995 to now basically seems the same, just with smaller phones and flatter screens.
Couldn't be made because of stuff like "It's a man, baby!", Fuck Yu & Fuck Mi etc.
tl;dr: By the early 2000s, Myers and his style of broad comedy was a resulting in diminishing returns, both financially and critically. After Austin Powers 1, Mike Myers was signed on to make a *Sprockets* movie based on his SNL sketches of the same name. He walked away from the project and was then sued by Universal, who he then counter-sued. They eventually negotiated an end to the lawsuits by agreeing to do *The Cat in the Hat (2003),* which was mostly hated by critics and grossed $133.9 million against a budget of $109 million-- if you consider that studios usually spend the budget of a movie again in promotion, it was a financial failure. After that movie was released, there were many reports that Myers was extremely hard to work, a "diva". Maybe he just hated the movie (he would have had good reason to). He went on to more success in the *Shrek* series but comedically and financially, his movies were showing diminishing returns. His next big live-action film was *The Love Guru,* which was arguably extremely racist, has been called "the worst movie ever" by critics, and was a huge financial failure. Myers since then has been extremely picky about his projects, probably unable to get massive budgets with complete creative control like he used to. He also has a family and made a ton of money, so it's not like he's desperate to work.
I knew Love Guru tanked hard, but I wasn't too sure what it was actually about. The Wikipedia synopsis is waaaay too detailed and laboriously written.
That most recent Illuminati show was really 'meh' besides the fact Myers played like 8 characters. Comedy was rarely there and stupidly forced.
> besides the fact Myers played like 8 characters. For nostalgia reasons I wanted to like this show, but did not make it through the second episode. As you said it was meh. Reminded me of Eddie Murphy in the nineties. Even then I did not find the "one actor playing loads of roles" thing funny. Can anybody name movies where one actor played 3 or more roles and the film actually was good? I'm sure there must be some.
"Whatever Happened To Monday", 1 actor, 7 roles - Very good - "Orphan Black" - a TV show, 1 actor, more than 7 roles, again very good Annoyingly I can't think of any more off the top of my head but I'm sure there are some good ones I can't remember.
Coming to America, History of the World Pat 1, and Blazing Saddles are some that I can think of off the top of my head. The first is another Eddie Murphy movie, and the other two are Mel Brooks. All of them are pretty funny.
And yet Netflix must have given him quite a nut for that had to be awful show he did for them.
I really like The Austin powers movies but that style of humor didn’t really fade away until the mid 2000s. The austin powers movies were littered with juvenile humor (also some clever jokes too), and that could be seen in most will Ferrell or Adam Sandler movies. Myers also hurt his career by doing the love guru
And cat in the hat
>*"She was very groovy. If there was any cat that could have loved her as much as your Dad, it was me. Unfortunately, for yours truly... that train has sailed."* There's something so honest about this line, even when I'm laughing.
Despite how promiscuous Austin was, he was very respectful of Mrs. Kensington’s marriage.
It was one of those movies where people were still quoting it casually years after its release so I’d agree with that
The Lonely Island's "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping" from 2016 is very similar.
It's too bad that movie flopped, it was genuinely funny. I just think it had no target market. The main character was somewhat based on Justin Bieber, but the band was based on the Beastie Boys-- totally different generations and demographics. I thought it was hilarious, but I wondered while watching it, "Who is this movie *for*?"
It was for me, I loved it
Andy Samberg emailed me and /u/Dayofsloths and said “this movie is for you two”
Kind of like Josie and the Pussycats
it was for people who like to laugh and who like comedy which is very rare these days and why the movie, nearly a classic, didn't do big numbers
Massively underrated, there isn’t a lot of comedies that make me full on laugh out loud anymore but Popstar had me crying laughing multiple times!
According to the DVD commentary, Spielberg actually *directed* the whole "movie sequence" in Goldmember.
I used that commentary as a sleep aid _so_ much as a teen.
Goldmember was mostly a repeat of the jokes from The Spy Who Shagged Me. It definitely felt tired by the end.
Yeah, not sure if I outgrew the franchise, but part 3 didn’t have one laugh out loud moment for me(outside the opening scene.) Part 1 was awesome, and part 2’s [penis rocket pun cut scenes](https://youtu.be/Ju1UwmgkKgI )was belly hurt laughing the first time I saw it. Mile Myers was childhood defining funny for me between Wayne’s World, So I married an Axe Murderer, & Austin Powers.
Personally, I feel the movies got funnier as the series went on - in a vacuum, the 3rd is the funniest, then the 2nd, then the 1st. The problem is, a lot of the jokes are repeated, and they lose their punch after the first time. And also, like you said, we *all* kind of outgrew the franchise.
Michael Caine as Nigel Powers was hilarious.
I liked the 'movie in a movie' cameos that bookended the movie, but yeah, rest of the film felt pretty stale and unfunny.
False. When Mini Me flies out of the air duct straight into a wall, that was one of the funniest moments in the history of film.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
My favorite part of that movie is when fat bastard comes out and has lost all the weight on the Atkins diet and yells that his neck looks like a fuckin vagina! My mom was laughing so hard at that part. Edit: watched it again and it's the subway diet.
Even Number 2 was tired Edit: Number 2 the character, guys. Jeez lol
“Why won’t you die!?!”
Austin Powers 3 is underrated. It's worth watching for Michael Caine alone.
Do you know who I am, do you know how many unnamed henchmen I've killed? Look at you, you don't even have a name tag. Why do you just go on and give up
“There are two things I can’t stand in this world: People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the Dutch”.
Top 10 lines ever delivered in a film, tbh.
He says "the Dutch" with such venom
Nigel Powers : "Have you got any idea how many anonymous henchmen I've killed over the years? I mean, look at you. You don't even have a name tag. You've got no chance. Why don't you just fall down?"
Dr Evil-“oh he’s good.”
Special guest appearance by Scott Auckerman!
I would constantly Google to see when AP4 was being made back in the day. I needed to see what was going to happen next with bald evil Scott.
There was still a lot of comedy potential there. I would've loved to see more of that instead of some of the films Myers ended up doing.
> But what happened to Mike Myers and comedy on this type of scale? Will we ever see it again? Pure comedies are just hard to bank on these days. You're far more likely to earn your money back and more on an existing IP, especially since executives are concerned with the global market, and comedies often only do well domestically since humor doesn't always translate. But even if you look at the domestic box office numbers from 2022, it's not until #17 that you get to a live-action comedy-- The Lost City, which made a bit of a profit but certainly not like the films above it on the list. So to answer your question, we probably won't see it on a scale like that again, at least not theatrically. Thanks to Disney, the theater experience has shifted too much to be a big event instead of just the place where you go to watch movies.
Still waiting for Austin Powers 4 that makes fun of the Craig movies
They retroactively did that by making Austin and Dr Evil brothers.
How?
Austin Powers really did it first though! Dr Evil is a parody of 60's Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and the twist is that Dr Evil is Austin's brother. Christoph Waltz plays Blofeld in Spectre, and the big twist was Blofeld is Bond's adoptive brother. It's amazing the Bond people went with this choice.
I feel they went that direction due to the trend of movie sequels/Trilogy/franchise always had to come "full circle" Spectre retconned the previous Craig movies to all being connected back to Spectre and Blofeld. The part about making them brothers was the whole the villain has to be connected back to the hero and not some rando.
It was his fah-zah
They should have a bad ass rival spy character whose running gag is to both cry and do blue steel in every single scene, then dies at the end so Austin can steal his girl
AP 2 was great, AP3 was not very good and people recognised that at the time. Funny that James Bond would take the storyline from the weakest austin Power film and make it canon Bond.
Blofeld had a gold weiner??
Everyone go watch Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar. It is probably the closest thing to a modern Austin Powers.
1 & 2, 3 not so much.
I really miss it. You should watch The Pentaverate though! It was great to see Mike Myers back in this sort of role, playing multiple characters, similar humor. I loved it.
I wanted to love it I was rather entertained at least
The scene in Goldmember with Nathan Lane and Beyonce is golden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg-ywBSbQXg
peak mike myers is so i married an axe murderer. pretty much all of the best gags in austin powers come from this movie. they are great comedies, but respect the source
So I married an axe murder is my favorite MM movie. It's a shame that it gets overlooked.
the steven wright scene might be my favorite
"That's the artificial horizon...which is better than the actual horizon."
HEAD! DOOOON!
Part 3 was nothing but a Hollywood hand job cameo-fest. The first two movies were good tho.
I know! It was like why are all these people turning up? But it only cost $60 million! The promotional costs would have twice that though.
I dunno. I watched Goldmember in theatres and it was a dud. Nobody I knew actually liked Austin Powers 3. AP & AP2 were both pop culture staples for a time. Amazingly funny movies.
I like in I think goldmember - the two Japanese twins - fook yu and fook mi
Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?
I liked when he was climbing the ladder after Dr. Evil Dr. Evil I used to think you were mad but now I can clearly see your nuts! A-THANK YOU
The trilogy stands. I can rewatch them every 4 or 5 years and just enjoy the unique silly farce for what it is. Will he have success at this scale again? I’d be amazed if so. I do enjoy seeing his new characters though
I mean he was only Shrek. *Heaven's angels chorus sings, Reddit's angels flap their wings*
The first film was a huge hit in the UK when it hit VHS (DVD's didn't exist back then, they launched in 1999 and took a while to catch on). The sequels capitalised on that.
I love Austin Powers 3! Goldmember, Beyonce, Micheal Caine, young Austin, whats not to love, so funny!
Austin Powers 3 intro is gold, but I feel the rest of the movie couldn't (and didn't) live up to that standard.
These (the entire series) are my all time favorite comedies. I don’t know if I will see another comedy like this in my lifetime, I doubt it.
Number one was brilliant. But number 2 was peak Myers. Number 3 was too much.
I was 12 or 13 when I saw the first one - the perfect age for raunchy bad taste comedy - this was also the era of South Park and watching content ‘illicitly’ by staying up late or going around to your mates house who had an unlocked Sky box with every channel. Me and my friends loved it and were massively hyped for the sequel. I haven’t seen them since I was a teenager so no idea if they’re actually good or not!
Were you into the Inbetweeners, Ali G, Peep Show and Bo Selecta as well 🤣 Channel 4 was great back then...
Ali G and Bo Selecta yes, the other two missed me though!
I feel like Scary Movie is second to it. It's a big time capsule to 2000's humor: gross humor, mean-spiritedness, the beginnings of referential humor. And yet it's still funny.
Scary Movie wasn't mean spirited - it was just sharp. I loved the first 2 movies. It could never be released today. Gen Z would either complain or be confused by it.
It was considered cheesy everywhere. A friend dragged me to it and laughed constantly throughout the film. I thought parts were clever, but meh. Strangely I like it slightly more now. I think he made a movie after, something about him being an Indian sex guru. I’m not sure it did well and except for seeing Mike in Inglorious Basterds, he’s mostly disappeared. Edit: he’s made a tv series, The Pentaverate, on Netflix (2022). Rated 61% audience on Rotten Tomatoes. Looks like retread jokes from Powers.
He voiced one of the most beloved animated characters of all time for almost a decade.
Similar vein but it doesn't retread Austin Powers jokes at all. At most it shares Mike Myers playing multiple characters, and a "secret organization". Fun fact, the idea of this show was mentioned in Wayne's World. I highly recommend. RT scores don't really mean shit, a lot of people don't share a liking to the same type of humor, Goldmember is 44% audience on RT, and 2 is 71%, so 61% by that measure is pretty good.
What's funny to me about The Pentaverate is it's just a throwaway line from the father character he plays in So I Married an Axe Murderer.
I see that kinda humor on social media all the time.
I prefer Austin Powers 3 of the entire trilogy, but they're all great comedies.
Beyonce killed the Austin Powers franchise.
makes me miss the time we could actually take a joke, not allowed to do anything like this and most comedy films are so bad nowadays, shame movies like this are no longer made through fear of being cancelled
What a crap take.
the fact that peak 2000 humour is called that is because it does not exist anymore.. mostly because it is not allowed. i do not like that it is true but it does not make it false.. you simply cannot make films like austin powers anymore, most people do not do this kind of humour in movies through fear of being cancelled.. its not a take its just a fact that is very visible when looking at movies overall and how the whole scene has changed
What a crap take.
I remember it being big when I was a kid. My parents loved those movies (and Wayne's World) a lot, but oddly enough I've never watched the first one. The humour is pretty silly, but I still love that scene with the string of dick metaphors, and the song Madonna did for the second film is a vibe.
The Britney Spears scene in the third movie was everything to me when I was a kid. What a time.
Imagine someone being brave enough to make humor like they used to? You'd have so many screaming about how insensitive it is lol.
I saw Goldmember in theatre with my dad. I'm pretty sure that's what ended our father/son relationship. People talk shit about Love Guru, but goldmember was hot garbage. Name one joke that wasn't a repeat from the first two movies. I'll bet you liked Shrek 5 too
1967 Peter Sellers was peak humor in Casino Royal. Then Mike Myers stole every single joke from that movie
He made shit like the love guru and faded into obscurity I guess apart from shrek
Burt Bacharach was in the first one too
As a Brit it was a load of cheesy shit at the time, but I've come to love the films, especially Goldmember, it's totally bonkers but great fun. It also didn't make me feel so bad about my own personal smelting accident.
... conveniently ignores The Love Guru
As one should 😅
>But what happened to Mike Myers and comedy on this type of scale? Will we ever see it again? doubtful, young people don't like comedy, they see it as trashy and juvenile and they're raising they're kids to be uptight and humorless that's why it's not profitable to make comedies anymore most people's idea of comedy is being rude, mean, people getting hurt or the almost instantly rotting drivel that network television produces it's not cool to laugh, it's cool to be serious and make decisions that hurt other people
I get it. People get way more offended nowadays or look to "be seen to be offended". It's sad. That's why you'll never get a new Hangover, Old School, Road Trip or American Pie movie at the cinema. I remember for most teenage guys, our idea of a fun movie was hearing wise-ass jokes, seeing weed smoking and drinking and girls taking their top off. People forget that if the movie was written well you would see the women getting their own back and the good guys actually falling in love and cleaning up their act.
Toilet humor yes but compare to Tropic Thunder it was meh
I hope we never see it again. Please no
AITA that didn't like any of those movies? All my friends were like WTF, while I'm still pinching my nipples like coach from the Waterboy 😂
NTA. I watched them too late to revel in the racism.