The first of the Austin Powers movies was a moderate theatrical success in 1997, but it became a smash hit on video, where millions more discovered its quirky spoofing of swinging '60s British culture and spy-movie conventions. I would argue that the reason for this is because this particular brand of comedy works best through repetition and familiarity, when you know the lines and have seen it enough times to truly absorb all the details. That is when the Austin Powers movies are really funny.

Thus, it should come as little surprise that the third time around, Austin Powers in Goldmember, is funny, but slightly disappointing on the first viewing. Much like the second installment, The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), there are a lot of expectations, and the movie ultimately doesn't live up to them. However, I have the suspicion that once Goldmember, like its predecessors in the series, is played dozens of times on DVD and various cable stations like TBS, its humor will reach the sublime level that is expected of it.

Of the three movies, Goldmember is certainly the most complicated plot-wise, although its plot elements are just as silly and ridiculous as the previous movies. In this one, the intractable Dr. Evil (Mike Myers), still a misguided dork crossed with an evil genius, has a plan to use a "tractor beam" to draw a meteor into hitting the earth and melting the polar ice caps, thus causing a worldwide flood. In order to do this, he must travel back in time to the shimmering disco era—1975 to be exact—and recruit Goldmember (Myers ... again), an ultra-weird, ultra-tanned roller-skating Dutch émigré with a silly lisping accent and an obsession for all things gold.

Just as Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) skewered the pop culture of the late 1960s, Goldmember makes great use of the hedonistic ridiculousness of the mid-'70s, introducing Goldmember in an over-the-top roller-disco club called Club 69 and sending shagadelic superspy Austin Powers (Myers, of course) after him dressed in full pimp regalia, complete with floppy hat and platform shoes. There, Powers runs into an old flame, Foxxy Cleopatra (played by the gorgeous Destiny's Child lead singer Beyoncé Knowles), who is less a character than she is an amalgam of every kick-ass Pam Grier blaxploitation trope in the book (she even declares "You're under arrest, sugah" whenever she gets a bad guy), but with an added element of sweetness. Knowles is much more comfortable in the movie than Heather Graham was in The Spy Who Shagged Me, but one cannot help but feel that she has been given too little to do.

Again, Mike Myers and former Saturday Night Live scribe Michael McCullers have collaborated on the screenplay (they cowrote both of the previous movies) and Jay Roach is directing. They expand on various character relationships (as much as that is possible in a movie this absurd), and the theme here seems to be lost fatherhood. Dr. Evil's angry and unappreciated son, Scott Evil (Seth Green), finally finds a way to connect with his dad (by being more evil, of course), which pushes Dr. Evil's 1/8th-size clone, Mini-Me (Verne Troyer), out of the picture. At the same time, Austin is forced to reconcile with his father, Nigel Powers, a swinging superspy himself, who is played in a feat of brilliant casting by Michael Caine, whose character Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), and The Billion Dollar Brain (1967) was one of the original templates for Austin Powers.

By this point, it is clear that Myers is running out of new ideas, as Goldmember self-consciously recycles in various guises many of the best jokes from the previous movies, including a moment in which two characters are behind a screen and their interacting shadows appear to be doing something absurdly grotesque. Myers is still a master of the bizarre, though, and his jokes about Goldmember and his Dutch background are supremely weird (do the Austin Powers movies not play well in the Netherlands?). And, while he does engage the scatological from time to time (there are two extensive jokes that revolve entirely around urination), including the return of the massive Scottish spy Fat Bastard (Myers ... yet again), Myers doesn't get quite as gross as The Spy Who Shagged Me.

The movie's best sequence, however, isn't saved for last; instead, it opens the movie. It involves the making of a massive cinematic opus about Austin Powers and features a litany of star cameos that reads like Premiere magazine's annual power list (I wouldn't dream of giving them away since each one's revelation is part of the enjoyment and the humor). The fact that Myers could recruit so much of Hollywood's royalty to take part in his inner-spoof is testament the cultural cachet the Austin Powers series now wields. And, even if the series has just about lost its mojo (and its dwindling originality), Goldmember is not a bad way to go out. It's not exactly a blaze of glory; but, like the others, we can look forward to its playing better and better once it goes into heavy rotation on the small screen.

Copyright © 2002 James Kendrick