Austin Powers in Goldmember: Review By B. Alan Orange

Code Orange Alert #39146: Goldmember

For the life of me, I can't even remember the title of the second film. What can I say? I've never been a fan. There's just something about the character of Austin Powers that rubs me the wrong way. Looking at Mike Myers in that outfit has the same effect on me as ramming a pencil underneath my scrotum and then digging it around a bit. I don't know if it's the blue velvet of his suit, or that glaring ascot, or his cheeky smile. I can't deal with this package as presented in whole. Maybe it has something to do with the ultra-traumatic experience I had when I was five; my mom left me by the down escalator in Sears, reading the Christmas Catalogue, when this guy, who looked just like Austin Powers, asked me if I wanted to sit on his knee. His need and want in life was to read me a Golden Book; he had five to choose from. Mind you, this was around the time Adam Walsh got abducted, so, as you can imagine, this creepy Englishman scared the yellow out of my adolescent innards. I didn't want to wind up another headless kid in the annals of history.

That said, AP3 is a much more pleasing experience than the second one was. By leaps and bounds it achieves its goal. If you liked the first two, this will be your cup of tea. Me? I laughed once, which I'm not allowed to talk about (even though Entertainment Weekly gave the whole thing away over a week ago. What's up with that?), and I almost smiled a second time at something no one else seems to have seen.

Sorry, I can't tell you where I saw it, but there's this retarded man in the background chewing on a yellow ball. I'm not sure why I found it amusing, but I did. Why just this and not the rest of the film, which flies gags by at a constant, blurring rate? I don't know. Goldmember is that annoying theater major who jumps in front of you and rams her fingers so hard into your ribs it hurts. Its only goal is to make you laugh, and it will stop at nothing until it succeeds. Right there is my problem. I almost feel like this type of theater going experience is a game. I'll sit there with a sullen look about my face, daring the thing to make me chuckle. For some reason, I can't willingly give myself over to the beast. There's no element of surprise. It's like watching a horror movie; I don't get scared because I know it's going to try and scare me. Broad humor just isn't my bag.

What's up with Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy? Do they both have to play every single character when they make a film? Talk about self-idolatry. I'm amazed Shrek only allowed them to voice one character apiece; they surely could have done the whole project alone. After watching Murphy blow himself in a hot tub during the hellish duration that is The Nutty Professor 2, I decided to give up on the man. Like Billy Crystal, he's on my sh*t list until he can stop being such an ass on celluloid. Myers, on the other hand, is almost enduring. His characterized self-interactions are never presented in a loving manner. It's as if different sides of his persona are at a constant war with each other.

This holds true, even with the bad guys. In part 3, Dr. Evil continues to show disdain towards every obnoxious villain thrown his way. There's no love between Evil and Goldmember. The doctor remains skeptical of this louse every inch of the way. It's no wonder that here, in the third installment, Austin and Dr. Evil come together in a loving embrace. It's almost as if Myers has come to accept his own faults as a human being. You can literally see the man forgiving himself on-screen, a touching bit of irony in a film that seems to be, on the surface, about nothing more than sh*ts and giggles.

Unlike the last film, where Myers centered most of his energy on everything but the character of Austin Powers, Powers once again becomes the centrifugal force here. His other characters take a back seat. It's easy to get lost in the man's art; while watching the first two chapters of this on-going saga, I was never under the impression that all of these people were being played by the same man. With the Goldmember character, the persona is flawed; almost a failure. At every turn, I'm fully aware that it's Mike behind that make-up. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Goldmember is a blatant rip-off of Steve Rubel and that whole Studio 54 facade. More than any other character Mike Myers has played before, Steve was his truest, and it's easy to see why he's brought elements of him back, if for nothing more than to poke fun at it.

With Goldmember, Mike seems to know some of these bits have grown old. You can literally sense his fear that some of the jokes might not be working. He expresses this many times over in the film by having other members of the cast either fall asleep or roll their eyes in an annoyed, irksome manner during whatever goofy proceedings might be going on. Director Jay Roach never lets anything go on for too long, and sometimes a character will blatantly stop a joke just to get it out of the room. For that reason, I found it hard to hate the film, even just a little bit.

What I did hate is that this plays up some pretty bad product placement by having full thirty-second commercials snuck in under the guise of a joke. If you look at the Pepsi Twist ad with Brittany Spears, or the Doritos advertisement where Mike is dancing in the mirror, those both could easily fit anywhere into this film. Likewise, the Fook Mi-Fook Yu Japanese Twins sequence mirrors those television adverts by being nothing more than an above-tawdry Heineken commercial. Of course, you could never show this on TV, so they've taken their liberties in pushing the envelope. Then we have the scene where Frau brings Dr. Evil a bag of Taco Bell while he's in jail. Again, this half a minute could easily be interrupting my nightly TV viewing. The sneakiest of all is Fat Bastard and his claims that he 'lost all that weight' by following Jared's Subway diet. Yeah, it's a funny jab, but they show him with one of the sandwiches. How blatant is that? You can't really fault Myers and Roach for this. At least they attempt to keep it entertaining. There doesn't seem to be any getting around PPP these days.

Those tie-in hits are easy to squeak in, because it's an open field. Like the previous adventures in this cannon, plot is of little importance. I'd say it's an above average companion piece to Road to Perdition. Both are father and son epics that would play nicely on a bill together. We get to learn the back stories of our two lead characters, and then some. End of story. One of the gifts in the film is getting to see Young Austin and Young Evil at a boarding school where awards are given out for being a Man of Mystery. The film's other gift is Beyonce Knowles. I never cared for the girl too much before this, but I must say, she won me over. Oh, and as a sort of in-joke for the fans, Dr. Evil finally gets his sharks with the laser beams screwed into their heads. Nice touch. (This bit was a deleted scene on the original Austin Power's DVD.)

If you're just out looking for a good time, you can't do any worse than Goldmember this summer. It's the only comedy out there worth its weight in paint right now. As for my sad, stupid outlook on life, I'm going too have to stick to Giant Spiders and Crop Circles. That's my bag.

"Clean up your act!" www.mopshoe.com

How's that for product placement?