AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER Review

AUSTIN POWERS 3 aka AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER – whatever ya call it, this film just doesn’t settle well.

The movie is very funny when you’re sitting there watching it… at times, but overall I really do feel this is the worst of the series. I wasn’t a very big fan of the first AUSTIN POWERS, but with the second one I laughed my ass off completely. I felt the introductions of Mini-Me and Fat Bastard were brilliantly funny. Heather Graham was deliciously hot, cool and yummy. Dr Evil was better than he had been in the first film and Austin Powers seemed to be more in his element.

In the third film all newly introduced characters with the exception of Beyonce Knowles are pretty darn terrible. Goldmember, himself, is DUMB in all caps. Not in a funny way, just DUMB in a… is this over yet… sort of way. He’s Dutch and he likes Gold. He’s LAME-O!

Perhaps the most disappointing was Michael Caine’s character – note I’m saying the character, not Michael himself. He plays what was written as best he could, but frankly the material is threadbare and the humor forced, trite and downright stupid. You see, the problem here is that Myers and crew in creating Austin Powers’ father were just plain lazy. They just made him Austin Powers plus 30 years. The result is that you suddenly have two people in the same room doing the same routine, IN on all of the same jokes and it just isn’t very funny. Nor is it particularly resonant either.

Comedy is often about the differences between partners on screen. Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Dr Evil and Mini-Me. With Austin and his dad – there is no difference. Zero, nada, nothing, zip. They are essentially the same character. Now had they played Austin’s father as being ashamed of his son Austin. His flippant haphazard bumbling through spy adventures. His downright ungentlemanly demeanor with ladies. Then there is his unwavering faith in something called ‘mojo’ instead of intelligence. Imagine if Caine was playing this more along the lines of Harry Palmer – stuck with a penis brained imbecile for a son. Hell at one point in the movie, there were 3 characters all on screen playing, essentially, Austin Powers – and that was just lame. A missed opportunity.

Now Fat Bastard should have been cut from the film entirely with the exception of his last scene. Otherwise his character was completely extraneous, unfunny and just stupid.

I’m not going to spend a great deal of time on this review, simply because explaining jokes, describing sight gags and cameos, that doesn’t really serve you and there is no higher understanding to be reached with basic run of the mill urination and fart humor. It has, basically, all been done before… better.

The saddest part is that the film starts off like a bolt of lightning surrounded by laughing gas… It gives you the hope that this is going to be a breathtakingly hilarious film. However, the second you see a well known geek fave doing flip-flops – realize that the film is never really going to get any better. To accent that, the film instantly pops into a completely uninspired musical number and a series of really bad celebrity cameos – again these reach such a minor level of humor that I was just sort of stunned.

What works in the film? Nearly every scene with Dr. Evil, Mini-Me and Scotty. Specifically, little Verne is kicking some severe ass. His comedic timing has been honed in the years following his emergence in the last film. He and Myers work brilliantly together here. And Scotty – well Scotty has finally become a worthwhile character.

I actually no longer want to see anymore AUSTIN POWERS movies… Instead, I’d rather see a movie called DR. EVIL – and I want him to win. I want DR. EVIL to take over the world and enslave mankind. What would he do when he had everything he ever dreamt of? If there were no more worlds to conquer, what would become of DR. EVIL? What would his world look like? Could it be worse than it is now? I mean, he wants sharks with frickin lasers on their frickin heads…. I do too. I think he’d like Spider-Goat and Glowing Kitty Kats.

If I can’t have that – I want to see the A-list AUSTIN POWERS movie we got a glimpse of in this film. Make AUSTINPUSSY for real.

Finally, is GOLDMEMBER worth your time?

You’ll laugh. There is some pretty funny shit in it, but I would say the movie is perhaps 1/3rd as funny as UNDERCOVER BROTHER – which I feel is easily 10 times the movie this was. I think the girls were sexier, the spy was funnier and the story was ace out hilarious. Sadly, AUSTIN POWERS 3 will gross more on its opening weekend than UNDERCOVER BROTHER did in its entire run, due mainly to a fairly lame ad-campaign with very shallow market penetration by Universal. Sad.

Then again, AUSTIN POWERS didn’t make near the money initially that its first sequel did… Perhaps UNDERCOVER BROTHER will be the same. Well, I can dream. I sincerely hope you have more fun with GOLDMEMBER than I did. It was fun, it just wasn’t all that and the cherry too.