The year is 1997, and the world was a different place than it is today. Wherever you fall on the spectrum of support for political correctness, it's fairly safe to say that whatever your definition of good taste and where the line is for offensive jokes would be different today than it was 22 years ago. 80's, 90's and early aught comedies are chock full of gags and jokes that today wouldn't pass the sniff test for even the most vehement opponents of censorship in film. They're simply mean-spirited or plain not funny, and wouldn't fly with most audiences today.

Consider the infamous Captain Winky scene from Ace Ventura, where the revelation that our villain is in fact a trans woman provokes the entire room to vomit in disgust. Or the scene in Revenge of the Nerds where our main protagonist straight up sexually assaults a woman, and it's played off as hey, that girl just needed to be tricked into being shown how great nerds are at sex! Or the scene in American Pie where our main character attempts to broadcast himself losing his virginity to the hot foreign exchange student to his friends, only to end up with the whole student body watching! While the last one has an admittedly funny punchline, where the main character ends up humiliated instead of his partner, it's still played off as no big deal, and a totally understandable thing for a teenage boy to do.

Comedies from these decades tend to be riddled with casual racism, sexism, sexual misconduct, transphobia and homophobia as well as jokes at the expense of the mentally and physically disabled, ugly, and disenfranchised.

Now, I'm not a prude- in fact, two of my favorite spoof movies, Not Another Teen Movie and Scary Movie often have jokes about these subjects that actually work as jokes. But typically the 'joke' doesn't land in these films because they're just mean-spirited portrayals of stereotypes or 'undesirables', without a joke in them. Take the Ace Ventura example- what, exactly, is supposed to be funny about the fact that a woman is actually trans? There's no real 'joke' to speak of, except that being trans is disgusting.

So. It's 1997. Mike Meyers releases his second smash-hit comedy movie since his departure from SNL, a throwback parody of retro spy-movies. I rewatched it recently, and thought the jokes were still funny years later. Sure, not all of them worked, but it definitely got more than a few chuckles out of me. What really struck me was how well it held up in today's politically correct 'woke' culture- not that it simply refrained from making the mean-spirited non-jokes of many of it's ilk, but actively subverted many of these tropes. Probably the best-known one that has been making the rounds lately is when Mr. Powers refuses to have sex with his extremely drunk colleague. Another fun one is when Dr. Evil's extremely sexualised fembots end up being seduced by Austin instead of the other way around. The jokes about Austin's untraditional sex appeal (bad teeth, bad taste in fashion) are all good-natured ribbing. The beautiful woman Austin lusts after is a fully developed character, who is intelligent, qualified and capable (indeed, moreso than Austin Powers) and resists falling into the typical sidekick trope, or a limp attempt at a 'strong female character'. The jokes are fresh and original, and completely eschews cheap shots at any demographic. In fact, I would even go so far as to claim that Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was indeed, ahead of it's time.