Austin Powers In Goldmember

Austin Powers In Goldmember

Such as its comic inspiration, the James Bond series, the Austin Powers series thrives on familiarity. Not every James Bond film is good; once you start going to them, however, you wouldn’t dream of missing one. The same can be said for any Austin Powers movie. The third installment about the shagadelic Brit, “Austin Powers in Goldmember,” takes a step or two down from the first and second but it has some very funny moments maybe that’s all we hope for.

The familiar characters are back: Austin (Myers) himself, Dr. Evil (Myers again), Fat Bastard (Myers yet again) and Mini-Me (Verne Troyer). Is this a good thing? The first time we saw them they had the impact of novelty. Now Dr. Evil is growing a little repetitious (although he does get an extensive makeover this time), and Fat Bastard in his effort to remain attention-worthy, or because he has no choice has escalated his adventures with bodily functions into a kind of manic bathroom zeal; there are things we do not want to know about his bowels, and he tells us all of them.

This time Myers adds another character new to us: Goldmember himself, so named because well, because that’s what it sounds like when he says “gold member.” Played by Myers under layers of makeup as well as an inch-thick accent borrowed from Gouda cheese spread over herring and Heinekens all at once, Goldmember is a Dutchman with flaking skin which he likes to peel off and eat.

I’m sorry if reading that disturbs you at breakfast, but if it does then you probably weren’t planning on seeing this movie anyway. He doesn’t really grab the imagination like Evil or Bastard did; though he does provide the impetus for an unusually high number of Dutch jokes, all of which are supposed to be funny because they’re not funny.

One character I did like was Foxxy Cleopatra (Beyonce Knowles of Destiny’s Child). With an Afro out to there, she’s a 1970s blaxploitation heroine, inspired by the characters played by Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson. Alas, the movie doesn’t do much with her except assign her to look extremely good while standing next to Austin (a task at which she succeeds). Having journeyed back in time with Austin to her period of 1975 in a time traveling pimpmobile you heard me it’s too bad that he doesn’t do more with this opportunity; his idea of role play is swapping outfits with himself.

He travels there because Dr. Evil has kidnapped his father, Nigel Powers (Michael Caine), and hidden him in 1975. When they find each other, Nigel has a heart-to-heart talk with his estranged son; Caine’s timing is so droll he could be playing Oscar Wilde reading Dorothy Parker. Meanwhile, it develops that Dr. Evil plans to flood the earth with a beam from an orbiting satellite disguised as a giant brassiere.

(He likes things that look like other things; we first saw him in a satellite modeled on Bob’s Big Boy; this time he cruises in a submarine modeled on himself.) The funniest moments are self-contained inspirations that pop up from time to time out of the blue. One involves Austin’s desperate attempt to stand in for a tinkling statue whose water pressure has failed. Another involves a shadow-show when Austin disappears behind a screen to give a urine sample; he’s trying to hide Mini-Me, but in silhouette the effect is produced that he has an extraordinarily versatile anatomy.

There is also much entertainment value in subtitles during a Japanese sequence, where white backgrounds blot out some of the words, so that what remains looks obscene.” Consider “Please eat some shitake mushrooms.” Those scenes are funny themselves, as is the title sequence which introduces the first of many cameos by very big stars who names shall remain undisclosed by me and I like the whole tone ofthe Powers enterprise its wicked joy in Austin’s cheerful hedonism.

The movie is tired? Maybe the original inspiration ran itself out? Yes it does disappoint somewhat but I’m glad I saw it kinda-ish.

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