June 12, 1999 -- "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," the second Austin Powers movie is similar in quality to the first film, "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery." It is funny, in an extremely gross way.

The film is written as if Mike Myers and Michael McCullers, who co-wrote the film, were engaging in a game of one-upsmanship to see who could come up with the grossest bathroom humor. In one scene, Myers, who also plays several characters in the film, including Austin Powers, inadvertently takes a drink which consists of stool sample residue. It leaves him with a brown mustache.

Another character, an overweight Scotsman called Fat Bastard, seems to be in the film mainly as the butt of bathroom humor and extremely strange cannibalism humor as well. He says he likes to eat babies. Apparently the writers thought this to be funny stuff, because the character repeats it several times. The character is both sick and repellant.

Some of the film's better scenes involve Dr. Evil (also played by Mike Meyers) and his mini-clone "Mini-Me" (hilariously played by Verne Troyer). They seem to have a very close, and funny, relationship. It turns out Mini-Me also likes to eat people, but at least he only takes small bites. Dr. Evil's Scott Evil (Seth Green) also shows up again in this film, but really isn't given anything to do.

The plot has Dr. Evil returning from space to appear as a surprise guest on the Jerry Springer show, where alert Pentagon officials note his re-emergence. His nemesis, Austin Powers, is teamed with CIA operative Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham) to deal with the renewed threat of Dr. Evil.

Dr. Evil builds a time machine to go back in time and steal the "mojo" from the frozen Austin Powers. After this is done, Powers loses his confidence and is unable to, er, perform up to expectations. Powers also uses a time machine return to the time of the theft and trace the missing mojo. This leads to the paradox of duplication, causing more than one Austin Powers to be at the same time and place.

While Heather Graham is great-looking, her character isn't very interesting. Meyers does a good job with his multiple roles, but it seemed to me the funniest scenes involved Dr. Evil and Mini-Me. Verne Troyer is like a rat terrier, tiny but mean and relentless. His off-the-wall psychotic behavior was inspired.

As you can probably tell, the bathroom humor was a turn-off for me. "There's Something About Mary" also had bathroom humor, and it was funny, this was just gross and disgusting. The movie in-jokes, relying heavily on "Moonraker" and other James Bond films, and "Star Wars," worked pretty well, as did some of the slapstick. This film rates a C+.

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