Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

 "You know, what's remarkable is how much England looks in  no way like Southern California."

I'm not in the mood for anything serious, so this it is then. It is, of course, just more of the same sort of stuff from the first film with pop culture jokes combined with lots of metatextual fun, but I for one am not complaining. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

This time we're introduced to Mini-Me as well as Fat Bastard, a third character to be played with aplomb by Mike Myers. We get rid of Vanessa with hilarious simplicity and then get introduced to the wonderful Felicity Shagwel and... well, it's an Austin Powers film. You know the drill. It's very, very silly indeed.

What's interesting, though, about a film from 1999 being all nostalgic about thirty years earlier is how very '90s it all is from a quarter century later. Even this version of the '60s is very much a version of the decade curated to '90s sensibilities, more Oasis' "All Around the World" than "Yellow Submarine" in aesthetic. But we get the late Jerry Springer, absolutely in his pomp and a reminder of how even trash telly back then had a layer of basic decency to it that would eventually be got rid of. Even Starbucks was sort of newish back then.

The film works so well because it knows full well how daft it is and leans into that, with the time travelling shenanigans and the best knob, fart and poo jokes in cinematic history. The script is magnificent. So is the cast. But praise has to go especially to Mike Myers, absolutely at the peak of his career here. Brilliant stuff.