But The Spy Who Shagged Me has a solid, upstanding PG-13, and thanks to the good folks at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), kids will be reenacting the scene this summer at camps all over America. Not to mention the most dick jokes ever heard outside a urologists' convention. Not to mention even the title, which manages to sneak a silly-sounding British vulgarity onto megaplex marquees. Don't expect the Brits to return the favor and call it The Spy Who Fucked Me.

This isn't to make some prudish point about the movie itself, which is, if anything, even more tasteless than the original and funnier for it. However, it does say something about the prudishness of our ratings board--and by extension, us--that the MPAA penalizes serious, thoughtful sexual content, even as it ushers in far more salacious material with a wink and a giggle.

The idea, I suppose, is that a flash of actual sexuality is more objectionable--obscene? titillating? inspiring?--than laugh-it-up innuendo, however extreme. But when Mike Myers' mop-topped superstud struts past a buffet table, butt-nekkid, with his ying-yang obscured by suspiciously erect foodstuffs, does the MPAA think anyone past the age of 10 won't get the joke? If the ratings board's aim is to protect the young'uns from lewdness, it's shooing a single cow out of the gate while a herd of buffalo tramples the fence.

Especially since The Spy Who Shagged Me gets its biggest laughs thumbing its nose at the MPAA. In the sequel to the surprise 1997 blockbuster, Myers reprises his role as randy secret agent Powers, a groovy British sex machine cryogenically frozen at max testosterone in the swinging '60s. Thawed in the '90s with libido and velvet threads intact, Powers is a POW from the sexual revolution. His nemesis, Dr. Evil (also played by Myers)--who looks like Otto Preminger and sounds like Myers' old SNL boss Lorne Michaels--figures that the key to Powers' effectiveness is his sex drive, and he zips back in time 30 years to swipe the studsicle's "mojo." Suddenly feeling less than shagadelic, Powers enlists his female counterpart, Felicity Shagwell (Graham), to save the world from laser death--and to help get back that lovin' feeling.

Myers, his cowriter Michael McCullers, and director Jay Roach thus zero in on the myriad sexual hang-ups--castration anxiety, terror of commitment, and squeamishness about the act itself--that underlie their chief inspiration, the James Bond/Derek Flint superspy flicks of the '60s. I mean, did anybody ever have more interrupted sex than James Bond? The funniest running gags in Austin Powers carry this bewildering combo of innuendo and modesty to its loony extreme. When Myers isn't prancing naked behind oversized meat platters or unfurling Dr. Evil's awakening libido to the strains of "Let's Get It On," he's finding ways to list every penis euphemism ever coined without troubling a single censor. (One tactic: visiting celebs named Willie and Woody.)

Better paced than the original, The Spy Who Shagged Me offers plenty more belly laughs, from Rob Lowe's uncanny Robert Wagner imitation to the identity of Dr. Evil's shelter company. There are also the expected slow stretches, and Myers' Scottish routine is the biggest groaner since Red Buttons' "Never got a dinner." But Myers' put-upon Dr. Evil, who gets more screen time than one-joke Powers, dominates the film as surely as a Blofeld, whether he's hashing out family woes on Jerry Springer or using a global-attack scenario to stage a Great Santini psychodrama.

Nevertheless, what's funniest about Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me is its knack for being filthy and innocent at the very same time--just like Heather Graham's smile. In the '60s, when movies were starting to stretch the bounds of screen sexuality, the Bond/Flint films were a safe haven of leering without actual lust--something the Bond series has maintained to this day. As a result, smirky Bond bagged more babes than Wilt Chamberlain, yet coasted through the '70s without a single R rating; meanwhile, the honest, adventuresome likes of Carnal Knowledge and Last Tango in Paris fell prey to X's and obscenity hearings. Even today, movies like Spike Lee's upcoming Summer of Sam and Lars von Trier's The Idiots face the economic sanction of an NC-17 unless they kowtow to the MPAA's demands. Few kids will get to see these, or would ever want to. But it's nice of the ratings board to let The Spy Who Shagged Me clue them in to things far worse than what they're missing.