Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

Few artifacts of the late twentieth century arrive so thoroughly unburdened by contemporary moral instruction as this 1997 spy spoof. Mike Myers plays both the shagadelic agent and his bald nemesis, and the comic engine runs entirely on the gap between 1967 hedonism and 1997 propriety. The joke is never that Austin is wrong in any systemic sense. The joke is that he is a dinosaur, and that dinosaurs are funny. Elizabeth Hurley's Vanessa exists to raise an eyebrow at his appetites, and the film treats her disapproval as a running gag instead of a thesis. She is competent and unimpressed, which registers as the faintest whiff of corrected gender politics, and then the plot hands us fembots with chest-mounted machine guns and a character named Alotta Fagina. The ledger balances itself.

The satire aims squarely at James Bond and the Swinging Sixties, and it has no interest in race, sexuality, or the body as sites of meaning. Joe Son appears as a henchman and Brian George as a United Nations secretary, both incidental, both unremarked. Dr. Evil's discarded scheme to damage the ozone layer is a punchline about villainy already accomplished, not an environmental plea. Number Two's conversion of Virtucon into a legal multibillion-dollar conglomerate offers a shrug toward corporate satire, and Dr. Evil's boredom with business is a gag about megalomania, not a critique of capital. Vanessa's periodic scolding of Austin's sexual mores is the closest thing to a sermon here, and it arrives with a wink and a wedding ring.

What remains is a comedy of manners about a man out of time, content to be lewd, silly, and structurally innocent of any larger social project. It is a period piece about a period piece. The culture has since moved on, and the film has not followed. That is arguably its only remaining virtue.