Mike Myers was at one point, someone I considered to be a very funny man. I think he kind of overstayed his welcome in my book when the Austin Power's films went on for too long. Sure it is impressive that a person can play multiple roles in the same film but it just wasn't something that could stay funny forever.
Mike went away for a while and of course do Shrek voiceovers, but for the most part he has stayed away from features and just had a few minor roles in movies, some of which were serious roles like the one he played in Inglorious Basterds.
When I saw the advert for The Pentaverate I initially just kind of skipped it because the trailer alone reeked of Austin Powers and like I said, I've had enough of that brand of humor.
This series kind of follows in the same path as Austin Powers but it's less stupid. Don't get me wrong, it is still very stupid and juvenile, which is fun for the first episode or two and then it kind of wears off. The story is nonsensical and unimportant and the characters all seem rather unimportant to the overall direction.
The Petaverate is a hidden organization like the Illuminati that are the people who actually control the world. They are meant to be a completely hidden organization but as is the case with Austin Powers movies and Dr. Evil's strongholds, they are actually quite easy to infiltrate as their security is backwards and their guards are inept. There isn't much mystery here as none of it really matters.
I'm not doing a great job of selling it right now because I don't think it is a good show. I do however appreciate talent when I see it and Mike Myers definitely has a bunch of that. He plays about a dozen characters in the series and except for the Australian character, he really nails all of the accents extremely well or at least in a way that sounds legitimate to me.
I also admire the amount of time that he must have spent in makeup in order to prepare for each of these roles and many times, such as when they are gathered around their meeting table, he is playing all of the characters that are in the scene save 1 or 2.
This admiration I have for Mike's ability to do different voices is honestly the only reason to watch this series because it fails badly on basically every other front. This is not the series that is going to boost Netflix and I don't think that Mike could have thought that it might. The good news is that series is a limited one and each episode is easily digested. I did also kind of enjoy the Myers, who is himself Canadian, took some time to make some "digs" at Canadian people in a lighthearted kind of way.
I think my favorite character was "Ken" the news reporter who is extremely Canada-kind, and is too much of a nice person to ever do anything wrong but just kind of falls into situations right where he needs to be.
Should I watch it?
Urgh, the joke that is told at the end of that is a good representation of what sort of humor can be expected in this series when Mike, dressed as reporter "Ken" says "I haven't had this much fun since I was visiting a nudist colony and accidentally backed into a meat thermometer." Terrible jokes like that are sprinkled all throughout this series.I've said it already many times above but the only reason to watch this is to realize that Myers is an exceptionally talented actor but I think that this level of talent exists only in impersonations and accents. He's made a lot of money by doing little else so I guess we should congratulate him for that. I think if you watch a few episodes you'll get the full experience of what I'm talking about and at that point it's up to you if you want to continue any longer. It isn't a long series so there isn't much of a commitment here. I suppose if someone out there really enjoys the silly humor of Austin Powers films then they would enjoy this even more since it is essentially exactly the same thing.
