785. Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery (1997)

Starring: Mike Myers, Elizabeth Hurley, Michael York

Director: Jay Roach

Running Time: 89 mins

Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery is an American film about a swinging 1960s British secret agent who is brought out of his cryogenic freeze to face off against his arch nemesis, Dr. Evil, however he must first accustom to the modern world where his attitudes are way out of date before he can save the world.

This is without a doubt one of the best parody films I’ve ever seen. Taking the mick out of James Bond to such an extreme and farcical extent, this film isn’t just full of its own hilarious gags, but a whole lot of satirical jokes about the ’60s, 007 and the attitudes that there were in the first few Sean Connery films, and that I absolutely loved to laugh at.

Basically, it’s near impossible to get through this movie without wetting yourself laughing. It may be full of a lot of juvenile toilet humour that might irk some people, but even so, the majority of the comedy in this film isn’t necessarily rude in any way, but just extremely idiotic, full of fantastically quotable one-liners, surreal and downright crazy.

But that’s one of the reasons that I really love this film. It knows that it’s a stupid parody, it doesn’t try and place anything else within the story above the comedy, because it knows that that’s the most important part of it, so unlike many other of these films, where relationships, action and the plot can get in the way of the laughs, this doesn’t take itself seriously, it’s just full-blown hilarity from start to finish.

Having said that, I did actually really enjoy the story too. Taking on the generic Bond plot, this film was really fun to watch from an action-oriented perspective too, because it’s full of fun fighting (judo chops and all that), while it also has all the other hallmarks of a 007 film, mainly ridiculous innuendo, but also exciting spying too.

Overall, then, this gets an 8.3, because it’s an absolutely hilarious Bond parody full of great gags from start to finish, coupled with a pretty decent story too.