Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Just because you've created a successful franchise doesn't mean you have to run it into the bowels of the earth until you've scraped every last dollar from a gracefully fading name. Especially if you're Mike Myers and you actually have a few shreds of actorly chops left in you. You're allowed to move forward, to drop the puerile sex humor and maybe try your hand at a few new dramas. You were pretty good in Inglorious Basterds, Mike. You don't have to work the Austin Powers groove for all eternity. And you especially don't have to do it on Broadway.

 

Yep. Not only is Myers hastily working on a fourth installment in the film series despite the fact that it's been nearly a decade since his international man of mystery last hit the screen in a fairly embarrassing filmic romp, but he's also penning a musical adaptation of his most famous work. He's not planning on appearing in the show itself, not even as one character, let alone half of them, but he is in talks about releasing this thing sometime in the next few years.

 

I'm a little confused as to who Myers's target audience is, here. I guess he's going after those folks who were kids or teens when Austin Powers first rose to popularity and now are working professionals who have enough money to splurge on Broadway tickets to a raging nostalgia-fest. But are thirty-somethings with jobs and families and whole lives still going to feel the impulse to giggle at heavy-handed sex puns? The original films were as overacted and obvious and blunt as films get, and the stage tends to amplify that buffoonery by at least ten.

 

And I don't know about the average viewer, but I actually don't have that much nostalgia for the Austin Powers series. I watched it back when I was in middle school or so and I thought it was funny at the time. We quoted its memorable lines ad nauseum, and I guess "mini-me" is still embedded somewhere in my vocabulary. But I definitely don't have the same fondness for Austin Powers as I do for something like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, whose musical adaptation was fun and raucous and warmly nostalgic. The Austin Powers films were entertaining but it's hard to feel a lasting connection with them ten years after the fact. Myers's timing might be just off enough on this project for it to flop. We'll see.