Summary
Austin Powers, that monument to bad SSRq60s fashion and questionable British dentistry, is just one of the arcane characters invented by [Mike Myers], who seems to be enthralled by the excesses of the SSRq60s. He grew up in Scarborough, Ont., a famous artistic wasteland that's been slapped onto Toronto like a backwards baseball cap, and his first memorable character was Wayne Campbell, the would-be heavy metal sex god and stringy-haired naif. The Wayne's World routine, with Dana Carvey on schwing guitar, was the greatest tribute to the culture of the finished basement since Rupert Pupkin was hosting imaginary talk shows in The King of Comedy.
The road from Wayne to Austin Powers isn't that difficult to follow: the sexual danger of James Bond would be exactly the kind of thing Wayne and Garth would dream about. That character was an inspired invention, a man of impeccably ill-considered self-regard and wonderfully horrid 1960s clothing, fighting Bondish villains who were likewise as easy to parody as the innuendo of Powers Girls names like Felicity Shagwell. The hero himself was partly oddly configured cartoon and partly a tribute to Myers's late father, and he seemed like something Myers might have cooked up in high school.See the full content of this document
Extract
Myers Schwing has Lost Its Sting
By Jay Stone
The big movie faceoff this week is between two raucous comedies, Get Smart and The Love Guru, both of which have staked out June 20 as the date when people are going to want to laugh. (Last weekend, ...See the full content of this document
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