Empire’s 30th Anniversary – The One That Got Away: Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery

Published on13th August 2019 at 3.22pm

People:

For our 30th Anniversary Special Edition issue, we picked the 30 films from the last 30 years that have defined Empire’s lifetime, but some favourites didn’t quite make the cut. Chris Hewitt argues the case for Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery.

In the eternal argument that is ‘which year was the best ever for movies?’, 1997 might often get overlooked in favour of some of the heavier hitters, like 1941 (Citizen Kane! The Maltese Falcon! Dumbo! Sullivan’s Travels!), 1984 (Ghostbusters! Gremlins! The Terminator! A Nightmare On Elm Street!) or 1999 (seriously, look it up — that year was crazy). But for me, 1997 will always have a special place in my heart.

I was at university, and going to the cinema a lot. And I fell in love with much of what I saw that year. (It’s also the year of Batman & Robin, possibly the worst big-budget film of all time, so let’s not pretend that there was something in the water.) Virtually any of which would have been worthy of their own cover. There’s the prestige one, L.A. Confidential. The daft Nic Cage actioner, Con Air. The other daft Nic Cage actioner, Face/Off. The endlessly quotable Grosse Pointe Blank. The spry sci-fi fun of The Fifth Element. And don’t even get me started on Event Horizon, a horror film which wormed its way into my brain and has refused to leave for two decades.

I don’t recall ever being so joyously blindsided by a film.

But my One That Got Away is a comedy, a genre I feel is constantly overlooked, not least in our collection of films that define our 30 years. Out of 30, only Bridesmaids can be considered an out-and-out comedy. Shaun Of The Dead is a horror comedy. Toy Story is, y’know, for kids. Otherwise, though, comedy has been ignored by Team Empire. No Anchorman. No Dodgeball. No Hot Rod. Or Hot Fuzz.

I could have gone for any of those. Yet I’ve plumped Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery, aka the funniest film of 1997. And for a year that contained Batnipples and the Batcreditcard (don’t leave the Batcave without it), that’s saying something. I don’t recall ever being so joyously blindsided by a film. I’d seen the trailers, of course, and as something of a Mike Myers fan, was quite looking forward to it when I rocked up with my mates at the Odeon in York. But I didn’t expect to laugh so hard that I had to pick myself off the floor. Twice. (The ‘they’re always after me lucky charms’ gag and the moment where Austin battles an assassin in a toilet cubicle, making it sound for all the world like he’s having a massive shit, in case you were wondering.)

For all his versatility and ability to play different characters, Myers’ schtick – a penchant for muggery, if you will — grew pretty old by the time the execrable The Love Guru rolled around in 2008. But in the first Austin Powers, we got to see a genius-level comedian at the height of his powers, creating two distinct characters in Austin Powers and Dr. Evil. There’s a moment, in the brilliant group therapy session, where Myers, as Dr. Evil, communicates pride in his son, Scott, before remembering that he’s evil, and therefore he should sneer at him instead. And he does it all with just a look. It’s, for my money, the single greatest piece of comedic acting in the history of movies. Peter Sellers, eat your heart out.

But there’s more. A bombardment of gags of all shapes and sizes, at a rate that would give Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker a run for their money. An anything goes attitude that allows cameos from the likes of Christian Slater and Carrie Fisher, not to mention a musical interlude from Burt Bacharach.

But there’s real comedic artistry at play here. This is the movie that had been playing in Myers’ head for years, a love letter to his British heritage and the movies and music he had grown up on in Canada. It would have been all too easy for him to improvise like hell and figure it out in the editing room with Jay Roach, but ideas like the sad fate of anonymous henchmen and Dr. Evil’s obsession with frickin’ sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their foreheads are proof that Myers was also a comedic writer of some note. You might even say groovy, baby.

Read Empire's list of the 30 films that define the last 30 years.