Austin Powers 2 - The Spy Who Shagged Me

Corr, this coffee smells like it's a bit nutty...

Dr Evil (Mike Myers) is back and this time he has a new plan. With the help of Fat bastard (Mike Myers) he will destroy Austin Powers (Mike Myers) and once and for all, rule the world. Wait a minute? Is anyone else starring in this movie?

It's 1999 and Austin Powers is happily married to his one true love, Vanessa (Liz Hurley). Problem is, she's a fembot and after a nasty climax to their bedroom antics, Austin becomes a free man again, ready to swing with the best of them.

In the time that Dr Evil has been defrosted, he's developed a time machine to go back to 1969 and steal Austin's Mojo. Mojo? Mojo!. The libido, the life force, what the french call a certain, I don't know what. Anyway, to help his quest, Number 2 has created an exact clone of Dr Evil only he is 1/8th in size - Mini Me.

Together, they travel back to 1969 to destroy Austin when he has no mojo. But Austin is onto his lack of swingability and ventures back in time to retrieve his mojo and save the day. In 1969 he meets up with Felicity Shagwell, an American secret agent with the personality that Austin would die for. Oh she swings baby, Grrrrr...

In the meantime, Dr Evil has created a "laser" to destroy Washington DC if his demands for world domination aren't met. It's up to Austin and Felicity to defeat Dr Evil, disarm the "laser", steal back his mojo, come back to 1999 and shag.

A complete hoot that had me in stitches all the way through.

Talk to the hand cos the face don't want to hear it anymore.

From the moment I fired up the disc at a random seen I was mesmerised at the quality presented. DVD can't be this good can it? Well, it is. The colors, Oh the colors, reds, blues, greens, yellows, oranges - all the colors of the bow man. You know, it felt freaky in a way. I can't seem to recall a dvd that looked so colorful. I had to go back and compare it with the region 1 disc to see if there was a difference. It was only slight, so why did it look so different from what I thought it would look. Ahh our good friend PAL.

This is a very sharp and detailed picture, but it's not too sharp. Take a look at the screen cap of Fat Bastard and look at the detail in that image (That is after I had to resize it to half it's resolution). If I left the image raw, it would look even better. I can only say that this transfer looks like it is a raw digital transfer rather than a film-to-video transfer. I know it's not, but that's how clean it looks.

Black level is superb. Finally a dvd with black level, and a dynamic range in the color, that I am really happy with. I felt alot of other PAL transfer just had that little tad of grey/blue in their blacks but this is just excellent.

Why an 8 for video you ask? Well, it's not perfect. Which is a damn shame as it could have been the perfect transfer of any dvd I've seen to date. There is mpeg artifacting present in the transfer. I first noticed it in the first Dr Evil scene, sitting around the table, in the Starbucks building. Looking at the outlines of people you can see the notorious mpeg artifacting. It's not very obvious but it is there and if you know what they are, you'll see them easily. Checking the bit-rate of the transfer, it only sits on 5 for the entire movie.

Sitting back on your couch and just enjoying the movie, you'll be looking at one of the richest looking dvd's to date. Doing a review of the disc, you'll see the artifacts.

Mini Me.

BOOM BOOM BOOM. Is it me or does this soundtrack 'feel' alot stronger than what I've seen from my 3 visits to the cinema and my many viewings in region 1.

Whilst not being a fully fledged surround track, the soundtrack does show off your audio systems capabilities. Most noticable is the more detailed center channel and tighter and deeper bass.

Boasting a Dolby EX soundtrack in suitably equipped cinemas, this dvd just sounds like your basic Dolby 5.1. We've got no EX hardware in Aus as yet to test the theory of the dvd being 6.1 encoded but the scene where Dr Evil's phallic rocket makes it's lift off to the moon does invoke a semi even surround presence across the left and right rear speakers. Who knows.

You want audio sync? Please look elsewhere, as we have quality audio here. My player defaulted to having the english subtitles on, as is reported by others.

A great soundtrack to compliment the vibrant imagery.

Fat Bastard - A classic Mike Myers character.

Where do we start? Village has provided us with a feature for feature replica of the region 1 version with the exception of the dvd-rom component due to space restrictions. I fiddled with the dvd-rom component to see if we missed out on much, trust me we didn't.

Let's take a look:

• Animated menus - with custom Austin Powers voiceovers. "Groovy Baby Yeah", "Make a Selection", "Oh you're a naughty one". Some classic lines to help you through the menus as Austin dances you through the numerous options with rotating flower power in the background. "Yeah baby, Yeah".
• 21 deleted scenes - Hehehe, I had a good laugh out of these. 18 minutes of scenes that had to be cut for time reasons. There are some classic scenes in here and some that I'm glad didn't make it. You can access each scene individually or play them straight through. The 21st scene is more a compilation of various cuts rather than a scene itself.
• 2 Theatrical trailers - One for Austin 2 and one for Austin 1. Both presented in DOlby Digital 5.1 and 16x9 1.85 ratio. A little on the dirty transfer side but still good looking.
• 2 Teaser trailers - Remember seeing the Star Wars take of teaser trailers? Probably not as they weren't in Australia from what I can remember. They are basically the same trailer with only a minor change at the end.
• Dolby Digital Canyon Trailer - The usual dolby intro included with all the latest VR releases.
• Audio Commentary - by director M. Jay Roach, Mike Myers and writer Michael McCullers. A great commentary track and Mike Myers seem more enthusiastic about commentating this movie than the first. There are some nice tidbits revealed like how one of the special effects editors place himself and his friends onto a footpath of a wide shot of a London street, or how the Fat Bastard suit was a 7 hour effort with interesting possibilities if one Mike Myers needed a toilet break. Great stuff indeed.
• Cast/crew filmographies - A nice portfolio styled theme menu where you are given a filmography (obviously taken from imdb.com) of each character. I didn't realise Robin Swallows was actually Gia Carides, Australian actress if I'm not mistaken. Go Gia!
• Cameos - A nice section, themed like the cast/crew section with links to all the cameos in the movie. Select the actor/actress and be taken away to their scene in the movie.
• 3 Music videos - Beautiful Stranger sung by Madonna featuring Austin Powers, Mini me and some others if I'm not mistaken. With his teeth and some green lighting Austin looks like the Incredible Hulk. American Woman sung by Lenny Kravitz featuring a sultry Heather Graham doing some sexy moves on the room of a parked bus. Finally, Word Up sung by Scary Spice featuring Verne Troyer (Mini Me) on a semi posessed chair.
• Behind the Scenes Featurette - A 26 minute look at the making of Austin Powers with interviews from Cast and Crew. A great look at the antics that went on off the set. Each scene is chapter based with the ability to play the whole feature through.

  The dynamic Duo - Powers and Shagwell.

• HIDDEN : Dr Evil Featurette - Go into the Special Features menu, stick around for 30 seconds or so and wait for the Evil rocket to flying through the middle, leaving behind the E logo. Click on it and get taken to an EVIL menu. In it you can find failed Evil plots from various movies and 2 links to Dr Evils songs in the movie. They just link direct to the scene in the movie. Missing is the 30 minute comedy central featurette which is a hoot.
• HIDDEN: CD-ROM promo - click on the flower in the bottom right of the special features menu and you'll see a 3 page promotion of the new Austin Powers CD-ROM available at all stores as we speak.
• HIDDEN: Credits - Not really hidden but click on the New Line logo on the main page and look at the credits of those involved. I didn't see Village Roadshow or PMI in this one. Tis a shame.
• 16x9 Throughout - Village are sticking to their commitment of presenting every aspect of their dvd's in an anamorphic fashion. Brilliant stuff.

A worthy successor to the original, probably better in most, if not all, aspects and a jam packed dvd. Apart from the slight artifacting in the video, which will be un-noticable to most of you, this is one cracker of a disc.

I can honestly say this is the most vibrant looking disc I've seen to date. Period.