Critics, even the most pig-headed ones, are easily swayed.

There they were last week, sardine-canned into a cinema in Leeds, laughing into their sleeves as Mike Myers put on his frilly shirt for a second time and once more saved the world.

Yet two years ago, wasn't it that same bunch that had emerged from the preview theatre grumbling about the least funny comedy they'd seen for a decade?

Ah, but that was before Austin Powers became a worldwide phenomenon. Everyone loves a bandwagon to jump on.

Me, I don't mind bucking the trend. I loved the first movie; it was infectious and original - but I'm less enthusiastic about the sequel.

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (yes, in America it's a type of dance) has more one-liners than perhaps any movie since Airplane!, and it is, by any standards, very funny indeed. But because it's set, for the most part in the 1960s, the central joke about a misfit adapting to life in another age is lost.

And success brings excess. The "big movie" feel afforded by the increased budget takes away the film's edge, and homogenises it with a hundred other Hollywood comedies.

We join the action this time in 1969, two years after the Bond-like secret agent Austin Powers was cryogenically frozen. The berserk Dr Evil (also played by Mike Myers) is intent on blackmailing the world's leaders, and to keep his nemeses Mr Powers at arm's length, has determined to steal - nudge, nudge - his mojo.

Dr Evil is a Blofeld clone, and Myers is clearly infatuated by him: he has as much if not more screen time than Powers himself.

The star has invented a third character for himself, too - a fat Scotsman who makes Rab C Nesbitt sound like the Duke of Edinburgh, and whose flab had to be constructed by Jurassic Park's model maker, Stan Winston.

The characters time-travel confusingly from one decade to another. Austin asks his boss, Basil Exposition (Michael York): "If I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, I could go and look at my frozen self. But if I'm still frozen in 1967, how could I have been unthawed in the Nineties and travelled back to the Sixties?" Trust me, the details really don't matter.

The action takes place in the sort of psychedelic, red pillar box London that Americans are fond of imagining. "You know what's remarkable is how the English landscape looks in no way like southern California," says Myers to camera, his tongue so far in his cheek his eyes must be watering.

Heather Graham makes a decorative leading lady, and there are cameos from Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson and Jerry Springer. There's also the novelty of seeing Rob Lowe doubling a young Robert Wagner.

All of which unselfconsciousness makes Austin Powers II extremely difficult to seriously dislike, comparisons with its predecessor aside.

Film buffs especially will have a field day: there's a Hollywood reference in almost every line - and for those seduced by the novelty of the title, there are enough sexually-oriented gags to keep the average 12-year-old chortling all the way to Burger King.

"Those pants are skin tight - how do you get into them?" Austin asks Miss Graham. "Well," she muses, "you could start by buying me a drink." Oh, behave!

David Behrens

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.