Austin Powers in Goldmember
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When I wrote a review for the first Austin Powers sequel, I commented that “the franchise is likely to run out of steam if it doesn’t come up with some new jokes soon”, pointing out that Austin Powers 2 reused many jokes from the first Austin Powers movie. Sadly, Mike Myers couldn't be bothered to come up with any new jokes, with such disastrous results that we can only hope that Austin Powers 4 is never made.
As ever, the plot is an irrelevant jumble of spy clichés. Dr Evil (Mike Myers), working in conjunction with fellow supervillain Goldmember (Mike Myers) has kidnapped Austin Powers' dad (in a daring move, not played by Mike Myers but instead by Michael Caine). Austin (Mike Myers) therefore has to go back to 1975 for some reason where he and sidekick Foxxy Cleopatra (Beyonce Knowles) must defeat Dr Evil.
Essentially it's the same plot as the first two films, except this time there is an unnecessary extra villain to defeat and it's set in a different decade. Austin Powers himself is as irritating as ever, unfortunately the usually more amusing Dr Evil isn't really given any good lines this time around. All the usual characters (Scott Evil, Mini-Me, Basil Exposition) re-appear, and do the same jokes they did in the first two films. Beyonce Knowles is tolerable but fails to be funny and Michael Caine should be ashamed of a lazy performance in an under-written role.
It is a sad state of affairs when a comedy's best moments are provided by the celebrity cameos, but the opening sequence featuring a film-within-a-film starring Tom Cruise as Austin Powers and Kevin Spacey as Dr Evil is the best part of the movie. It would probably have been better if the entire movie featured them, but instead we have Myers indulging his obsession with playing multiple unfunny roles. As the movie goes on, the only possible option is to pray for it to end soon, before the audience can get inflicted with more puerile jokes that weren't really all that funny in the first two films.
There is no plot, no interesting characters, no original ideas, no decent jokes and therefore no point. Hopefully there will also be no sequel.
Rating : 3 / 10
DVD Review (Region 2)
There is a decent selection of special features. Some of the deleted are better than their non-deleted counterparts, sadly they are still not very funny. There are also a couple of decent featurettes as well as trailers and music videos that are as excrutiatingly bad as the movie itself.
DVD Rating : 6 / 10
All content ©2003 William Marnoch.
Comments? Agree/Disagree with the Reviews? Suggestions? Random Ramblings? Whatever you might want to say, feel free to e-mail me at william@wmarnoch.freeserve.co.uk .