oh beehave
The year is 1997, and the world was a different place than it is today. Wherever you fall on the spectrum of support for political correctness, it's fairly safe to say that whatever your definition of good taste and where the line is for offensive jokes would be different today than it was 22 years ago. 80's, 90's and early aught comedies are chock full of gags and jokes that today wouldn't pass the sniff test for even the most vehement opponents of censorship in film. They're simply mean-spirited or plain not funny, and wouldn't fly with most audiences today.
Consider the infamous Captain Winky scene from Ace Ventura, where the revelation that our villain is in fact a trans woman provokes the entire room to vomit in disgust. Or the scene in Revenge of the Nerds where our main protagonist straight up sexually assaults a woman, and it's played off as hey, that girl just needed to be tricked into being shown how great nerds are at sex! Or the scene in American Pie where our main character attempts to broadcast himself losing his virginity to the hot foreign exchange student to his friends, only to end up with the whole student body watching! While the last one has an admittedly funny punchline, where the main character ends up humiliated instead of his partner, it's still played off as no big deal, and a totally understandable thing for a teenage boy to do.
Comedies from these decades tend to be riddled with casual racism, sexism, sexual misconduct, transphobia and homophobia as well as jokes at the expense of the mentally and physically disabled, ugly, and disenfranchised.
Now, I'm not a prude- in fact, two of my favorite spoof movies, Not Another Teen Movie and Scary Movie often have jokes about these subjects that actually work as jokes. But typically the 'joke' doesn't land in these films because they're just mean-spirited portrayals of stereotypes or 'undesirables', without a joke in them. Take the Ace Ventura example- what, exactly, is supposed to be funny about the fact that a woman is actually trans? There's no real 'joke' to speak of, except that being trans is disgusting.
So. It's 1997. Mike Meyers releases his second smash-hit comedy movie since his departure from SNL, a throwback parody of retro spy-movies. I rewatched it recently, and thought the jokes were still funny years later. Sure, not a
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I rewatched the films a few days ago and had a thought about how constantly referenced these movies were in their day not as much as the Borat craze in the mid 2000s but still a lot. To me they fall in the stupid and fun movie category. I’ve always viewed them as ok parodies of the Bond films that definitely got dumber and worse with each installment. But overall they still are kinda entertaining at least all the Dr. Evil segments that haven’t aged too badly comedically. Meaning still funny and not annoying like Austin becomes as the series goes on.
Anyway just wanted to see what everyone else thought given the movies have somewhat faded into obscurity.
In 1997 Austin Powers and Tomorrow Never Dies were released.
In 1999 The Spy who Shagged me and The World is Not Enough came out
In 2002 Goldmember and Die another Day came out.
Whats cooler is even though (domestically) the first Austin Powers made much less then Tomorrow Never dies, the second and third Austin Powers were actually more successful Domestically then any James Bond film.
Other trivia Tomorrow Never Dies came out the same day as Titanic did and became a rare James Bond film to never hit #1.
So I never see these movies mentioned for funny or satire greats. Why is that? Cause it's shamelessly not PC? Maybe cause it's very crude?
I rewatched the first two since it was on t.v and I was still laughing out loud. Not some tiny chuckle, nope full blown laughter.
Myers didn't only kill this role but the scripts are pretty great imo. Very underrated film and script..
Fook Mi, Fook Yu!
Today I watched the first two films and wow looking back the personality and impression is spot on. Even the costume was well done. It's a shame his second verse was stolen from him.
https://preview.redd.it/vqf0bw7v07e41.png?width=2213&format=png&auto=webp&s=1396f9162e8d73ea51ef147936a2b096246f9980
I remember when i was younger and watching Austin Powers and a couple of the random henchmen deaths had funny macabre back stories. I was just watching this on Netflix today and the scenes don't exist. This is in New Zealand. Am i having a case of the mandela effect or no. The character run over by a steamroller having a family. And the sea bass death guy having a bachelor party. No? Was there others? I cannot recall.
In 1997 Austin Powers and Tomorrow Never Dies were released.
In 1999 The Spy who Shagged me and The World is Not Enough came out
In 2002 Goldmember and Die another Day came out.
Whats cooler is even though (domestically) the first Austin Powers made much less then Tomorrow Never dies, the second and third Austin Powers were actually more successful Domestically then any James Bond film.
Other trivia Tomorrow Never Dies came out the same day as Titanic did and became a rare James Bond film to never hit #1.
