‘Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me’ Was the Peak of Mike Myers’ Live-Action Career

The summer of 1999 was a big one for franchises, uncharacteristically so. The 21st century’s summers have been packed with prequels and sequels and remakes and reboots, and 1999 in retrospect looks like foreshadowing. That’s because when I think of the summer of 1999, I think of two movies: Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Okay, it does seem a bit odd to link the highly-anticipated first new Star Wars film in 15+ years with a low-budget, low-brow spy parody, especially when that parody is also a sequel (comedies aren’t really known for having stellar sequels). But I make the comparison to point out just how omnipresent The Spy Who Shagged Me was. If you want to know what it felt like to be a teenager in 1999, listen to Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger” while setting up a Jar Jar Binks cardboard cutout. That’s it, that’s the vibe.

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me grossed $312 million worldwide, a whopping $206 of that coming from the States alone. Compare that to the performance of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery just two years earlier. That film, considered a box office flop, only grossed $53.8 million domestically (only $67.6 worldwide). But something groovy happened when the film hit rental chains: Austin Powers became a stealth hit. And I can vouch for this, as I was one of the Blockbuster Video converts, totally won over by Mr. Powers’ mojo. I saw The Spy Who Shagged Me opening weekend, and the soundtrack became the soundtrack of my summer (alongside Weird Al’s “The Saga Begins”).

I obviously wasn’t alone. The Spy Who Shagged Me outgrossed International Man of Mystery’s entire box office run in its opening weekend. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were witnessing Mike Myers at unquestionably the height of his live-action prowess.

Rewatching The Spy Who Shagged Me in 2018 (which you can easily do if you have an HBO account!), the film plays as an excessive testament to the goofy power of Mike Myers. There’s an unrestrained vibe to the film, which starts off with an extended musical nude dance-saunter, lets Myers indulge his love of accents by letting him play three totally opposite characters, and includes more poop and dick jokes than quite possibly any other movie in the 20th century. Seriously, an extended joke in this movie is whether or not Austin will drink a coffee mug of Fat Bastard’s (also Myers) runny, nutty poop. Fecal farce aside, all of the gags in The Spy Who Shagged Me go from funny to tired to I-can’t-believe-this-is-still-happening funny again. Absolutely no ad-libbed iteration of “zip it” was edited out, nor were any of Dr. Evil’s (also Myers) anachronistic Jerry Springer-isms.

I have a hunch that the real reason The Spy Who Shagged Me was such a tour-de-force of unfiltered Myers-ness because it was in the unique position of being a sequel to an under performer. For the first film, Myers and director Jay Roach probably sanded down the edges in order to appeal to studio execs and a wide audience. When the film tanked, their expectations of getting to do more tanked with it. The Spy Who Shagged Me is, therefore, a sequel with zero expectations. So why not just cut loose and do whatever? Give us a Dr. Evil sex scene. Give us a music-video-length parody of Will Smith’s “Just the Two of Us.” Ugh, give us a Fat Bastard sex scene (ugh). Who cares if it alienates the audience? What audience? The first movie made little money, so if the second one makes no money, who cares?

The risk paid off. The Shag-tastic affair became the highest-grossing comedy sequel of all-time that summer (it’s still in the top five 19 years later). The follow-up, 2002’s Austin Powers in Goldmember, would be equally successful, earning $296 million worldwide. But instead of living up to a VHS success story like The Spy Who Shagged Me did, Goldmember had to follow a bona fide box office smash. Even though the third Austin Powers film was a hit, the franchise stopped there, and so did Mike Myers’ live-action career. The Cat in the Hat did okay in 2003, but 2008’s The Love Guru, his attempt at launching another catchphrase-spouting character, was a disaster–and dismal rental numbers didn’t save it either.

And that’s it for Mike Myers’ live-action comedy career. His most successful franchise, the Shrek series, features only his voice. His current stint as the host of ABC’s Gong Show revival obscures his name and face behind the persona of “Tommy Maitland.” Aside from bit parts in non-comedies like Inglorious Basterds and the upcoming Bohemian Rhapsody, Myers appears to be done as a movie star. And that’s a real shame, because as sophomoric as The Spy Who Shagged Me is, rewatching it today reminds you of just how much of a force Myers was. The guy was a catch-phrase and icon-creating machine in the ’90s, and his absence for much of the 21st century is a bummer. But if you want to see pure unedited, unrestrained Myers, you always have The Spy Who Shagged Me, now streaming on HBO.

Where to stream Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me