This
is one of the nuttiest of the Connery Bond films and one of the most
enjoyable. Its narrative is borderline incoherent but that hardly seems
to matter to the filmmakers, who are simply using the plot as an excuse
for the sort of dumb/surreal gags that the series is famous for.
Watching this film you realize that Austin Powers is hardly a parody
at all — just a slight exaggeration of the tongue-in-cheek lunacy of
the early Bond films. This one seems to have been made by people on
some kind of drug that doesn't exist anymore — one part Merry
Pranksters LSD and two parts Rat Pack bourbon. The film is notable
visually for Jill St. John — unspeakably luscious here, performing
increasingly heroic deeds in increasingly fewer clothes . . .
. .
. and for images of Las Vegas in 1971 — from the shocking emptiness of
The Strip (Caesars was the only mega-resort in
existence at the time) to the wondrous dazzling neon of downtown, on
the western end of Fremont Street, before it was turned into a
pedestrian mall.
What's
more, Jay Sarno, creator of Caesars and Circus-Circus, and one of the
true visionaries of modern Las Vegas, plays a bit part as a carnival
barker at Circus-Circus:
You
can see Circus-Circus in this film exactly as it was when Hunter
Thompson first visited it in the early 70s and immortalized its
inspired, deranged essence. “The Circus-Circus,” he said, “is what the
whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won
the war.”