Forget Netflix, watch ‘Austin Powers’ on the Panida big screen

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

If you’ve noticed a lot more Netflix ads on Facebook touting films like “Austin Powers,” it’s not your social media algorithm offering up those pitches. The streaming giant is in a rare spot of trouble. 

According to CNBC, Netflix shares took a nosedive July 18, falling 10.3% following news that it had lost subscribers for the first time in eight years. Expecting 5 million new global customers in the second quarter of 2019, only 2.7 million materialized. At the same time, a total of 130,000 subscribers actually dumped the service, ScreenRant reported. 

The shortfall resulted in a staggering $16 billion loss to the company’s market cap, but don’t fret for Netflix — it’s total shares as of July 19 were still valued at $142.2 billion.

Regardless, the company needs to attract eyeballs, and what better way to do that than offering iconic films like “Austin Powers,” which started streaming on May 1 with both “International Man of Mystery” and “The Spy Who Shagged Me.”

Sure, you could help the mega-movie service recover a few bucks of its $16 billion loss and watch Mike Myers’ 1997 tour de force as the titular snaggle-toothed British spy. A better option would be to catch “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” at the Panida Theater, which screens the film Friday, July 26-Sunday, July 28. 

For the somehow-unfamiliar viewer, “Austin Powers” spoofs the early-“James Bond” series by reanimating a randy spook from 1960s London and dropping him in the late-20th century to do battle with his old nemesis, Doctor Evil. Myers plays both pro- and antagonists, joined by a cast including Michael York, Robert Wagner, Mindy Sterling, Seth Green and Elizabeth Hurley.

The jokes are alternately goofy and raunchy, the fashion is retro-horrible/awesome and the first film laid the foundation for a franchise that in subsequent installments gave us unforgettable characters such as morbidly obese Scottish goon Fat Bastard (Myers) and the inimitable late-Verne Troyer, whose turn as Doctor Evil’s diminutive clone Mini-Me has since become part of our cultural DNA. 

What would it be like to see the film that started it all on the big screen? Groovy, baby.