Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)

I am a huge fan of this series and love the first two sequels but unfortunately it seems Austin has lost his mojo. From the first five minutes of the movie I found myself un-amused and highly disappointed. The movie, though true to its efforts, attempts to bring about new life to the series with a brand-new villain named “Goldmember” which I found sad and very odd. The movie resorts to awful bathroom/gross-out humor to almost desperate measures. The most disgusting aspect of the movie was “Goldmember” who, due to his obsession with gold began to get diseased throughout the entire movie as his skin peeled constantly.

The movie also attempts to tell the story of Austin and Dr. Evil and how the two became enemies, but, once again, it fails to deliver its true laughs. Another problem with this is that it recycles old jokes that helped the first two deliver laughs, and in this movie makes it seem so forced. From the misunderstood shadow sequence to the constant sexual innuendos referring to one of Dr. Evil’s weapons, all the way down to a scuba outfit joke. This is probably the most packed sequel I’ve seen in the sequels as Mike Meyers does triple duty.

Mike Meyers is in his prime as he does a good job switching constantly between the four. We also get cameos galore from numerous celebrities like Tom Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey, and my hero, Steven Spielberg. Which parts they show up in exactly, I’ll let you see for yourself, but I was amazed and pleasantly amused. The movie also has another running gag in which Fred Savage plays a mole who goes undercover as “number two’s” assistant called “number three”. The odd thing about this mole is that he has a large mole on his face which makes it hard for any of the cast members to take him seriously.

This had potential to be a great running gag, yet lost steam after about the seventh time they pounded it into the ground. Beyoncè Knowles isn’t the worst actress I’ve ever seen, but I have to say, she is the hottest Austin Powers girl and the one with the most personality apart from her predecessors (Elizabeth Hurley, and Heather Graham). Plus, there’s Michael Caine who plays Austin’s father who is a rather dull character that doesn’t do much in the movie except stand around and tell off-beat badly timed jokes.

Not to mention the fact that this movie brings about a startling and odd plot twist which will amuse some and annoy others. It didn’t sit well with me. In the end, like “Godfather 3,” this was an unnecessary sequel and it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I expected laughs and instead got a sad spectacle of recycled jokes and lame running gags. I hope Mr. Meyers makes this his swan song in the series.