AUSTIN POWERS : INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY (65)

Directed by: Jay Roach

Starring: Mike Myers, Elizabeth Hurley, Michael York

The Pitch: 60s superhero Austin Powers, cryogenically frozen for three decades, re-emerges to do battle with the nefarious Dr. Evil. And shag some birds. Groovy.

Theo Sez: Remember that bit in WAYNE'S WORLD - totally irrelevant to the rest of it - where Wayne sang a few bars of Toni Basil's "Mickey" because it was the last song he'd heard before leaving the house and (your nod of recognition here) he couldn't get it out of his head? That's the airily spaced-out sense of humour - throwing cheerful irrelevancies into the mix without the need for boring explanations - that pervades this patchy but rather treasurable movie. It's a kind of comedy that can seem baffling when it goes wrong (remember the out-of-nowhere Scottish-family gags in SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER?) but, when it works, there's a liberating eclecticism to it that's like a safari through a free-associating mind - gags like Dr. Evil's monologue about his father ("Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy") have an untrammelled non-sequitur zaniness that's closer to S.J. Perelman or Stephen Leacock than the careful world of 90s comedy (and of course anyone who doesn't think "Basil Exposition" is the most hilarious name imaginable for an upper-crust Englishman is off my Christmas list for good). Which is not to say that it's any more sustained a spoof than, say, HOT SHOTS PART DEUX, or that all the staples of 90s comedy - jokes about farts and penises - aren't depressingly present ; but at least you feel they were written in because Myers thought they might be fun, not because audiences are assumed to be cretins. And at least it's the kind of film where flatulence can be accompanied not by giggly NUTTY PROFESSOR-style sound effects but by a gag straight out of old-time burlesque : "How dare you break wind before me?" "Sorry darling, I didn't realise it was your turn."