The second installment in Mike Myers's gentleman spy parody is something of an ugly duckling when compared to its siblings. Tossing away the more grounded themes and aspects of the first film, it dives headfirst into a sea of slapstick and never comes up for air. It's not a bad movie, nor is it unfunny; it merely dips into the well of recurring gags from the original too frequently and deals unfavorably with a tough set of growing pains.

The reverse time-travel elements are half-baked and don’t work, a shortcoming which the movie itself acknowledges by literally telling the audience not to take things too seriously. That may make for a good standalone punchline, but it doesn't solve the problem and as this follows in the footsteps of an excellently-written first film, it’s tough not to expect more. New cast members Mini-Me and Fat Bastard are brilliant additions who steal the spotlight every time they're on-screen, but Myers and flavor of the month Heather Graham never really connect as a duo. Simply going through the motions is good enough for a few laughs, but it's missing a lot of the invariables that made the series so successful to begin with.

Well we’re on a mini-marathon now, it’s official baby. Someone heard the cash cow moo-ing and they made a sequel.

Luckily for us, it’s not total dross.

Austin returns and this time Dr. Evil has gone back in time and hired someone to steal his mojo whilst he’s cryogenically frozen. 90s Austin follows Dr. Evil back to the 60s to recover it.

In terms of plot things are starting to get a little shabby here… There’s a mildly amusing self-referential nod to the camera explaining that none of this makes sense, but despite the warning it’s still annoying!

Otherwise it’s essentially more of the same. A few new characters are introduced, notably mini-me, Dr. Evil’s diminutive clone, and the budget has gone up a bit, but it’s otherwise hard to tell the two films apart.

That’s perhaps not such a bad thing, what worked in the first film works again here. It’s still silly, it’s still fun & it’s still original.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have watched these one night after the other. The sense of humour and tone is starting to wear thin but the laughs do keep coming, and in the case of Austin Powers I suppose that’s all that matters.

Oh and last night it was Liz Hurley, tonight it’s Heather Graham. Still flying high on that front.

http://benoliver999.com/film/2015/07/27/austinpowersthespywhoshaggedme/

**Despite Mike Myers' efforts, the film is nothing new, has a stupid, poorly written story, and isn't funny.**

After a great success with the first film, the sequel became quite easy to predict. It was obvious that they were going to try to make a second movie that continued the story, and tried to raise some more money from the box office. I'm not a fan of this kind of humor, too scatological and sexual, but I think this movie was frankly worse than its immediate predecessor.

The biggest problem with this film is not even the dirty, stupid jokes and zero sense of humor, but a poorly written script, without original ideas and quite tiring. The film's story is very simple to summarize: Austin Powers, single and free again, finally realizes that Dr. Evil, years before, used a time machine to steal his manhood while he was frozen. For a man as perverted and quinky as Powers, being without what he calls a “mojo” is simply catastrophic. So he has to use another time machine, go back to the 60s and try to stop Dr. Evil in order to regain his masculinity. Sound really stupid? Maybe because it is! And I prefer not to mention the ending, where we have two versions of the main agent, and we came to the conclusion that it was never really necessary to recover his virility. In addition to being stupid, the movie is also pointless.

Myers continues to assure the main characters of the film, that is, the protagonist, the great villain and a deformed criminal who is nothing more than a bunch of Scottish lard (do Scots feel offended by such a caricature?). He is a good actor, I have no doubt that he is committed to his work. However, the rest of the cast is uninteresting, tiresome and doesn't seem to have any ideas or even try to add anything else to the production that can increase its quality. Heather Graham is beautiful, but not very good as an actress, and the film saved her from spending the rest of her career making adult films. Seth Green also tries to do something witty and interesting, but he's short on time and quality material. Finally, a note of praise for Verne Troyer and Mindy Sterling.

Technically, the film is quite weak. It plays a lot with the colorful and flashy look of the 60's, and that's the most beautiful and elegant aspect of the whole movie. I liked the costumes, the sets and the characterization, in particular Myers, chameleonic and skilled in the various characters he plays (in fact, the film was nominated for an Oscar in the Characterization category). The cinematography also seeks to take advantage of and emphasize the visual beauty that exists here, while the editing sought to give the film a rhythm that was not tiring. I can't say that the efforts were in vain, the film would be unbearable if it were slower.

In my opinion this is the only good one out of the entire series. I was cracking up throughout the whole movie. The other 2 sucked compared to this one.