Overall Rating
  Awesome: 25.36%
Worth A Look: 21.53%
Just Average: 17.7%
Pretty Crappy: 19.14%
Sucks: 16.27%
8 reviews, 161 user ratings
|
|
| Austin Powers in Goldmember |
by Collin Souter
"Yes, it's funny, but stick a fork in it now."
|
For me, the first “Austin Powers” movie felt like a breath of fresh air. Out of nowhere came a movie parody that didn’t star Leslie Nielson, that had something to say about contemporary times, that didn’t take cheap shots and had its heart in the right place. The characters had charm to spare and the character of Dr. Evil earned his place in the realm of oft-quoted villains. I enjoyed the way in which these two characters from another time and another place maintained their disdain in this other time and place. Austin even had a character arch. At the end, he finds that love in the ‘90s means that loving with the heart should take precedence over the love of a good “shag.” Things have changed and so has Austin. “Finally,” I thought. “A smart movie parody.”All that idealism went out the window within the first 10 minutes of its sequel, “The Spy Who Shagged Me.” Once Austin found out that his new wife (Elizabeth Hurley) had in fact been a Fem-bot, he saw it as his way out of a monogamous lifestyle. In that moment, “The Spy Who Shagged Me” had the feeling of a sequel just for the sake of a sequel (I realize one can say that about almost any sequel). It seemed as though Mike Myers never meant for us to like Austin Powers, just tolerate him. He never meant for him to be a character, just a caricature. On top of that, Heather Graham gave a toneless performance that lacked the charm of Elizabeth Hurley.
So, now we have arrived at dreaded sequel number two, the ultimate test of a franchise. Does the Austin Powers series still warrant lines around the building, $100 trillion-dollar box office and yet another pay hike for Mike Myers? No, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t laugh. In fact, I found “Goldmember” to be the middle of the three. Not as good as the first, but slightly better than the second. It does make the same mistake a lot of comedic sequels make by repeating past jokes (The shadow play, the Dr. Evil musical interlude and the end-the-sentence word game, all of which gets bigger laughs this time around). “Goldmember” also tries to push its own envelope a little too often with its bodily fluid jokes, but I credit Mike Myers for still knowing how to get laughs out of potty humor. Apparently, the public still has a taste for it.
There doesn’t seem to be any point in going over the plot elements here. Michael Caine plays Austin’s father, Nigel Powers, whom Austin brings back to the future from 1975. Austin also brings with him Foxy Cleopatra (Beyonce Knowles), a female spy with a giant gold afro. Why does Austin go back to 1975? So they can make fun of the ‘70s, though they don’t try to cover any comedic territory that hadn’t already been covered in the better “Undercover Brother.” Instead, they use it as a way of introducing all these characters, plus a strange skin-peeing disco Dutchman with the world’s most pronounced codpiece named Goldmember (Played by guess who?).
Other characters from Austin’s past also make a comeback, including Fat Bastard, Mini-Me and Dr Evil’s usual henchman. Seth Green steals most of his scenes against Myers, who lets the Dr. Evil character get further and further away from its original inception. Dr. Evil has gotten less and less funny and an obvious “Silence of the Lambs” parody, in which Austin visits Dr. Evil in his new prison, seems beneath Myers’ writing capabilities. But Seth Green has gotten funnier and funnier with every movie and here, after he tries to alter his appearance, his looks bare an eerie resemblance to a certain Oscar-winning director and former TV star. I kept waiting for another character to make reference to it, but…
And, yes, that’s “Wonder Years” Fred Savage as The Mole, a messenger for Austin’s crew who happens to have a giant brown mole on his upper lip. In a scene all too reminiscent of “Uncle Buck,” Austin stares at the mole in bewilderment and can’t help but let the word “mole” slip out whenever he opens his mouth. It gets old after a while.
In this movie, Austin tries to get back in good standing with his father, who, as Austin grew up, kept missing graduation ceremonies. Caine’s character, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, has the same qualities as his son. In one of the movie’s first scenes, Austin sings at his club about how his father never paid attention to him. I took this to be a parody of every Everclear song ever written, but I could be wrong. Likewise, Dr. Evil’s relationship with Mini-Me starts to fizzle when Scott actually tries on the Evil wig and likes it. “Goldmember” has dozens of flashback sequences that show the origin of all this friction.
“Goldmember” also has some truly inspired moments. One scene involving white subtitles placed against white background will be especially hilarious for anyone who has ever had to sit through a good share of black-and-white Swedish movies. The opening sequence also has some surprises I wouldn’t dream of giving away, right after it takes a moment to make fun of the “Charlie’s Angles” movie, which I believe was a parody of “Mission: Impossible 2.” However, the sequence does come to a screeching halt when Britney Spears arrives in a humorless and awkward cameo.
I’m sure most people will walk into “Goldmember” knowing what to expect. For the most part, it delivers. It has jettisoned the fish-out-of-water element entirely in favor of a history lesson, as has been the case with most sequels. I also suspect that we will be in for a fourth Austin Powers movie, seeing as the first one never achieved even a fraction of its sequel’s success. To some, “Goldmember” might feel more like a second installment than a third. The humor has gotten more outrageous and juvenile, the characters not as fresh and the stories not as much fun.Yet “Goldmember” still made me laugh hard. Okay, some sequences fall completely flat and some grow rather tired. Okay, so the whole James Bond/Flint parody has no relevance anymore and most of the kids in the audience have no idea where this whole series comes from. When “Goldmember” hits, it hits the bullseye. I can forgive some of its faults simply because of its high score on the laugh meter. That’s why I went in the first place. Unlike “The Spy Who Shagged Me,” “Goldmember” doesn’t open with a wrong note that leaves a sour taste in my mouth. If anything, it helped bring The Parody, a burned-out movie sub-genre, back from the dead. But I still think now would be a good time to quit.
link directly to this review at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=5101&reviewer=233
originally posted: 07/26/02 00:35:43
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
 |
USA
26-Jul-2002 (PG-13)
UK
N/A
Australia
19-Sep-2002
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed
![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
