Bob, I'm just going to face the fact that you and I are never going to agree on any movie, ever.
Having said that, I'll make no apologies for "The Spy Who Shagged Me" and its obvious inferiority to the first Austin Powers movie. However, the third was just a terrible, unfunny film. Why would I say this? Simply put, the movie was entirely to self-referential. Myers recycled most of the ags in the movie from the gags in the previous movies. While this might've worked had it been a long time since the first two had come out, it didn't work in this case. The rest of the movie, the sorry attempt to reform the Dr. Evil character and make him a good guy, completely nuetered the character. Casting Michael Caine as Austin's father was a good idea, but then they did next to nothing with him. And the subtitles gag about the shittake mushrooms was better left to the 7th grade (and WHY did they feel the need to have Beyonce explain the gag? lame). The opening also dragged on, since having celebrities recite Austin Powers catch-phrases got old fast, and I got tired of Austin Powers imitations around 1998.