You know how sometimes you sit around with your friends and somebody asks “what do you want to do?” Someone else answers, “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” And so on and so on until you end up doing whatever it is you usually do when you hang out with your friends. That’s the feeling you get with an Austin Powers movie. Oh, sure, you had a good time, but it just wasn’t anything particularly special.
At least Austin Powers In Goldmember tries a little harder than the second movie did. It opens with a pretty spectacular (mostly because it’s unexpected) stunt, finally mining the vein of modern James Bond films. For sheer shock value, this pre-credit sequence provides the best laughs of the film, though it gets a little lazy.
Eventually the movie settles into its groove, which admittedly isn’t always groovy. At times even Mike Myers seems to be going through this thing on autopilot. (When Austin steals a line from Shrek, you know it’s a little more about the paycheck than the plot for him.) Once upon a time product placement appeared with great irony; now it’s just blunt and accepted.
Some of the same old same old still has value. For some reason, having Austin lead a psychedelic rock group, Ming Tea, makes me laugh. The only real new thing here is a set design that moves past the James Bond movies and into Gerry Anderson’s various supermarionation series. It’s a small thing for a fanboy to laugh at, but I appreciated a bunch of submarine crewmen dressed like members of SPECTRUM, not SPECTRE.
Okay. The review officially got too obscure there.
Briefly, the plot involves Dr. Evil (Myers) once again refusing Number One’s (Robert Wagner) attempts to go into legitimate but still evil businesses. Instead, Dr. Evil will co-opt somebody else’s evil plan to bring a solid gold asteroid crashing down to Earth (give Myers points for spooky synchronicity with this week’s news). That somebody lives in the 1970’s – a weird Dutchman nicknamed Goldmember (Myers again) after an unfortunate smelting accident.
Before Evil can really get going with the plan, Austin Powers captures him and his clone Mini-Me (Verne Troyer), mysteriously ignoring all of the mad genius’ henchmen sitting in the room with him. Thus they are free to travel through time and enlist Goldmember in a plot that involves kidnapping Austin’s father, master spy Nigel Powers (Michael Caine), and hiding him in a lair in the Me Decade.
Having already completely given up on logic in The Spy Who Shagged Me, at least this entry in the series has stopped apologizing for it. In a way, this frees things up. Once you accept that anything can and will happen senselessly in the service of bad jokes and potshots at popular culture, it gets funnier. If anything, it’s like a feature-length episode of Laugh In. For some of us, that works well enough.
Myers and partner-in-crime director Jay Roach pack Austin Powers In Goldmember to the gills with jokes and attempts at jokes. If a bad one-liner (and oh, there are so very many sure to be traded on elementary school playgrounds all across America) fails, you will quickly get distracted by a visual gag or a surprise cameo. Almost all the cameos work, with the exception of the already gratuitous Osbourne family shot. On the big screen, Ozzy just looks sad. Sorry.
The sexual repartee remains juvenile and sniggering, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. There’s a sad truth about men lurking underneath this; which of us doesn’t have a “Things To Do Before I Die” list that includes “Wild threesome with Japanese Twins” just above “Earn respect of father?”
While the dialogue tries really hard, Myers doesn’t. In a quadruple role, he seems to have pulled back on the energy of all his characters. Maybe it was just too exhausting. It looks like Roach and Myers decided to simplify Dr. Evil’s look a bit so they could change in and out of it faster. But the evil doctor is really just a shadow of his former self in this one. Fat Bastard is Fat Bastard, and thankfully, Myers pretty much writes him out of the series.
Almost everything about new villain Goldmember is underplayed, making him (gasp) almost a believable character. Only two physical quirks save the character from getting lost: incredibly limber legs, likely because of his penchant for roller disco, and a taste for his own skin peelings. The latter trait plays exactly as disgusting as it sounds, but it sure seems like something a real Bond villain would have. Even Austin himself is toned down, not nearly as ridiculously sexually aggressive as he started.
The rest of the cast gives their best, but it’s not always enough. Veteran actors Michael York and Caine have almost nothing to do. Though we’ve come to expect that for York’s Basil Exposition (it’s built into the nature of his name), wasting Caine is almost criminal. He makes the best of it, wandering through scenes with a roguish air. When given a chance, as in a clever little bit where he and Myers speak in code by lapsing into cockney slang, he brings a lot of life to the party. Making her screen debut, Destiny’s Child lead singer Beyonce Knowles has impact as Foxxy Cleopatra. Her Pam Grier impression is top notch. But like the worst of the Bond movies, Knowles’ character exists pretty much as set dressing. Spectacular set dressing, to be sure, but there’s no real mojo between her and Myers.
Working their butts off with the energy that made this series popular in the first place are the second bananas: Seth Green, Verne Troyer, and Mindy Sterling. Sterling refuses to be content with Frau Farbassina’s bizarre appearance; she plays it to the hilt. With his strange deadpan, Green saves some otherwise tired bits. If there’s to be a fourth film, which Myers is already hinting at, it looks like Green will get to step up as main villain. It will be welcome. Troyer really gets the spotlight this time around, defecting from Evil’s team and hamming up every moment he has. Myers created a monster and let it free.
This movie is a peculiar creature. Simultaneously more clever and stupid than people credit it, you’re either going to give into it or not. Like last summer’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, it’s a party for everyone involved. If you’re one of the in-crowd, then it works. You’ll laugh. You may not be proud of it, but you will laugh. And some days, that’s enough to hang out for a couple of hours.
And if the creative team does go for a fourth entry in the series, I know that I’ll go to that party, too.
