richardjp-17225
Has some absolutely hilarious moments in this movie, but unfortunately you have to watch the whole thing to find them. A movie which main jokes revolve around part of the male anatomy is pretty much a waste of time apart from a few scenes.
SnoopyStyle
Dr. Evil and MiniMe escape from prison and team up with Goldmember to flood the world by using a tractor beam to pull a meteor down to melt the polar ice cap. Goldmember has kidnapped Austin's father Nigel Powers (Michael Caine). Meanwhile Austin also travels back in time to 1975 to stop Dr. Evil and Goldmember.Michael Caine is a great addition. Beyoncé Knowles is not as good. The problem I have is Goldmember. He's very creepy, very weird, and not very funny. Fat Bastard does return and he's the good kind of weirdly funny as oppose to Goldmember. Mike Myers continues to add new interesting originality to this franchise. I just wish he could rewrite Goldmember or maybe just skip him altogether. And it's great to see MiniMe get a good important side story.
johnnyboyz
"Austin Powers in Goldmember" brings the curtain down on a mostly unremarkable series, something which exploded into life with an often funny spoof of spy films whose most interesting parts were when it juxtaposed life in the 60's with life in the 90's via subtle montages. It gave way to a sequel which ought not ever even existed such was its often intolerably lax nature, but Goldmember is a film which, to an extent, brings the franchise back. This is very much the sequel "The Spy Who Shagged Me" should have been, with Elizabeth Hurley's character from the first one perhaps returning to fill the role of the female accomplice; the time travel element removed and everything else remaining the same. Distancing itself from its roots was a brave thing for Goldmember to do, but distancing itself from the likes of the 1999 sequel was almost mandatory – thus, Jay Roach's 2002 second sequel is here stuck in a precarious position although just about manages to find a way out of it.The film will begin loudly and bombastically, in a manner that suits most fatuous Hollywood action movies, via its aesthetic and general content. For a franchise to be synonymous with the Bond films, I view this as a slight on more contemporary entries and how devoid of character and charm they are in the opinion of the makers: spoofing Oddjob and the idea of a hunched, cat stroking villain in a swivel chair is good fun out of the fact these people and their characteristics are so distinct and charming – fast-forward to what we're expected to spoof through the likes of "Tomorrow Never Dies" or "The World is Not Enough" and much is lost. How are you meant to riff on something which is so action orientated and without the sort of soul evident in the films of the 60s? But the film is not even a "The Player" take on what goes on behind the backlots of Los Angeles, filthy money grabbing cameos-and-all. Nay, for what we get is yet another entry which appears to be bored of Dr. Evil as the villain (before changing its mind); appears to be bored of the 60's and thus sees the 70's as an ideal setting (before changing its minds for the 2000's) and wants to throw in this quasi-deep father/son relationship subplot which, around all the action and in true "Last Crusade" style, is meant to see us all sigh in recognition that two men of the same name finally come together and accept each another.The chief difference in this third film compared to the others lies with its villain, Mike Myers' own Goldmember, a send up of 1964 smash Bond hit "Goldfinger". But where's the sense in sending up one of the most loved; most cherished Bond villains, about whom mostly nobody has anything nasty things to say? Spoofs are supposed to send up the relatively unloved; the often derided, the derivative and the easily mocked. Here, Goldmember is a world-hating; skin flake consuming abomination of a much admired former villain who speaks mock-Dutch and has suffered genital pratfalls. For a while, and with Myrers' other creation Dr. Evil behind bars, it looks like things are heading in the sorts of fresh directions with this fresh villain and the time setting of the 70's which was sorely required three years earlier. Alas, the film welches and it isn't long until we're back into a familiar groove whereby an African American character called Foxy Cleopatra (Knowles) is filling the female void whilst paying homage to a movement of films the target audience won't even have heard of. At one point, Knowles' character (herself an agent) is brought forward to the then present of 2002 – how does she react to this revelation? Why, by laughing at an Internet video of a monkey falling off a tree.I read somewhere that Myers based his performance of Powers on that of Michael Caine's in his 1966 breakthrough role "Alfie" – look closely at Powers in that first one and you will see scraps of Caine's Harry Palmer character as espionage and British spy films of the 60's are parodied. I mention this out of the fact Caine appears in this entry as Nigel, Austin's father. In a franchise that needed to expand, Caine's suave take on a former top agent and the material they give him is, admittedly, somewhat amusing. The way in which he points out how useless anonymous henchmen often are when the time comes for them to take on the hero in these sorts of films not only cracks a good observational joke but tees up further changes another character will undertake when Nigel's capabilities in psychological warfare are applied.Social critique was never the reason anyone tuned in to an Austin Powers film, but that doesn't mean there weren't instances of it in previous entries. Here, an amusing 'dance off' between Powers (with his group of 60s go-go dancers) and Britney Spears highlights an inherent clash in attitudes towards music of the then-and-now. Through Spears, we observe the highly provocative and heavily sexualised route contemporary popular music has undergone over the decades. Her backup singers are topless, everybody's clothing is black and leather invoked – things are much more aggressive. On the other side of the stage, Myers initiates a mock-fisticuffs session with Spears wherein his clothed, bubble-gum and seemingly normal troupe of flower-power girls and boys do battle to a thumping musical soundtrack as these two very distinct eras of music and attitudes towards dancing and music play out. The sequence isn't anything important plot-wise, but it's one of the best of the trilogy and proof that there is something at the centre of the whole Austin Powers idea which was always there, but just never quite tapped into. The film, like the series as a whole, is colourful and energetic but ultimately a bit drab and often inconsequential.
HawkHerald
So the first and second films in the Austin Powers were pretty funny. It parodied the inherent camp of the old 007 films of the 60's and 70's making Mike Myers a huge star. This was the third film he starred in as the character and it shows it's age. The "Yeah, baby" catchphrase was old and there's only so much of one actor playing a bunch of unfunny one liner characters you can watch. It seems these days if you want to see a comedian trying to hard to be funny then look for a fat suit or other outrageous costume and multiple roles in one film. The saddest thing is when viewing a movie like this is that you know Mike Myers is capable of something better. He's a versatile performer, a good writer and has shown some serious acting talent in films like 54. This movie came across as a desperate attempt at making money.
