Does anyone remember what the original joke of Mike Myers' "Austin Powers" series was? More to the point, does anyone care? The third installment, "Austin Powers in Goldmember", is a grab bag of gags, in-jokes, random movie spoofs, cross-cultural craziness, time-travel travesty, winks, nods and pantomime. It's truly a mess, but one that young fans and, no doubt, more than a few adults will embrace.
The franchise is definitely showing signs of wear, to say nothing of uncharacteristic sentimentality. But when Myers and company hit you with a perfectly realized gag, you throw up your hands in surrender. Whatever the creative fall-off, all signs point to boxoffice gold.
With each movie, Myers -- who again co-writes (with Michael McCullers) and co-produces -- plays more characters. Here he, of course, plays Austin, the spy from swinging '60s London, and his old nemesis Dr. Evil. He also returns as Fat Bastard, the grossly obese Scot. In a new creation, he takes on the title character, a gold-obsessed crime genius, easily the weakest of the lot, rather ill-defined but fortunately given little screen time.
The story is best understood as a series of skits loosely connected by the usual James Bond-ish absurdities. Characters from other movie genres join in. Michael Caine, who turns up as Austin's father, Nigel, recalls the Harry Palmer spy movies as well as "Alfie" from the '60s. Beyonce Knowles, founding member of the female vocal group Destiny's Child, displays glamour and charm as Foxxy Cleopatra, a salute to '70s blaxploitation. And in Dr. Evil's camp, Fred Savage plays a mole who indeed has a mole growing on his upper lip.
It's the 1970s that get the major kidding in this episode as Austin time travels back to 1975 for a quick visit to "Studio 69". But the story, such as it is, revolves around, of all things, daddy issues. Austin gets no respect from His Daddy, Caine's flamboyant yet emotionally careless British superspy. Meanwhile, Dr. Evil pampers his cloned and miniaturized self, Mini Me (Verne Troyer), while his real son, Scott (Seth Green), struggles for any recognition from Dad. This father/son quandary reaches an even greater level in a startling final revelation that wraps things up.
"Goldmember" has a host of celebrity cameos, mostly in the beginning, which New Line is asking critics not to reveal. The Tokyo setting of much of the story allows a few "celebrity" sightings one can reveal -- renowned chef Nobu Matsuhisa plays the cunning businessman Mr. Roboto, who designs the equipment Dr. Evil uses in his latest evil scheme, and Godzilla appears in a novel way in one of the film's funniest sequences. The Japanese setting also precipitates a truly hilarious gag involving the difficulties of reading subtitles.
Yet in "Goldmember", again directed by Jay Roach, the misses outweigh the hits by a wide margin. It takes more than 20 minutes for the movie to kick into gear, and too often frantic energy substitutes for comic invention. Oddly, the worst gags revolve around flatulence and excrement and the best around urination. Go figure. Better yet, don't.
Sets, costumes and effects have little rhyme or reason. But Roach's talented crew is merely following the blueprint of Myers and McCullers' wouldn't-this-be-groovy-baby script.
AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER
New Line Cinema
A Gratitude International, Team Todd/Moving Pictures production
Credits:
Director: Jay Roach
Screenwriters: Mike Myers, Michael McCullers
Producers: Suzanne Todd, Jennifer Todd, Demi Moore, Eric McLeod, John Lyons, Mike Myers
Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Richard Brener
Director of photography: Peter Deming
Production designer: Rusty Smith
Music: George S Clinton
Co-producer: Gregg Taylor
Costume designer: Deena Appel
Editors: Jon Poll, Greg Hayden
Cast:
Austin Powers/Dr Evil/Goldmember/Fat Bastard: Mike Myers
Foxxy Cleopatra: Beyonce Knowles
Scott Evil: Seth Green
Nigel Powers: Michael Caine
Mini Me: Verne Troyer
Basil Exposition: Michael York
Number Two: Robert Wagner
Frau Farbissna: Mindy Sterling
Running time -- 94 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
The franchise is definitely showing signs of wear, to say nothing of uncharacteristic sentimentality. But when Myers and company hit you with a perfectly realized gag, you throw up your hands in surrender. Whatever the creative fall-off, all signs point to boxoffice gold.
With each movie, Myers -- who again co-writes (with Michael McCullers) and co-produces -- plays more characters. Here he, of course, plays Austin, the spy from swinging '60s London, and his old nemesis Dr. Evil. He also returns as Fat Bastard, the grossly obese Scot. In a new creation, he takes on the title character, a gold-obsessed crime genius, easily the weakest of the lot, rather ill-defined but fortunately given little screen time.
The story is best understood as a series of skits loosely connected by the usual James Bond-ish absurdities. Characters from other movie genres join in. Michael Caine, who turns up as Austin's father, Nigel, recalls the Harry Palmer spy movies as well as "Alfie" from the '60s. Beyonce Knowles, founding member of the female vocal group Destiny's Child, displays glamour and charm as Foxxy Cleopatra, a salute to '70s blaxploitation. And in Dr. Evil's camp, Fred Savage plays a mole who indeed has a mole growing on his upper lip.
It's the 1970s that get the major kidding in this episode as Austin time travels back to 1975 for a quick visit to "Studio 69". But the story, such as it is, revolves around, of all things, daddy issues. Austin gets no respect from His Daddy, Caine's flamboyant yet emotionally careless British superspy. Meanwhile, Dr. Evil pampers his cloned and miniaturized self, Mini Me (Verne Troyer), while his real son, Scott (Seth Green), struggles for any recognition from Dad. This father/son quandary reaches an even greater level in a startling final revelation that wraps things up.
"Goldmember" has a host of celebrity cameos, mostly in the beginning, which New Line is asking critics not to reveal. The Tokyo setting of much of the story allows a few "celebrity" sightings one can reveal -- renowned chef Nobu Matsuhisa plays the cunning businessman Mr. Roboto, who designs the equipment Dr. Evil uses in his latest evil scheme, and Godzilla appears in a novel way in one of the film's funniest sequences. The Japanese setting also precipitates a truly hilarious gag involving the difficulties of reading subtitles.
Yet in "Goldmember", again directed by Jay Roach, the misses outweigh the hits by a wide margin. It takes more than 20 minutes for the movie to kick into gear, and too often frantic energy substitutes for comic invention. Oddly, the worst gags revolve around flatulence and excrement and the best around urination. Go figure. Better yet, don't.
Sets, costumes and effects have little rhyme or reason. But Roach's talented crew is merely following the blueprint of Myers and McCullers' wouldn't-this-be-groovy-baby script.
AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER
New Line Cinema
A Gratitude International, Team Todd/Moving Pictures production
Credits:
Director: Jay Roach
Screenwriters: Mike Myers, Michael McCullers
Producers: Suzanne Todd, Jennifer Todd, Demi Moore, Eric McLeod, John Lyons, Mike Myers
Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Richard Brener
Director of photography: Peter Deming
Production designer: Rusty Smith
Music: George S Clinton
Co-producer: Gregg Taylor
Costume designer: Deena Appel
Editors: Jon Poll, Greg Hayden
Cast:
Austin Powers/Dr Evil/Goldmember/Fat Bastard: Mike Myers
Foxxy Cleopatra: Beyonce Knowles
Scott Evil: Seth Green
Nigel Powers: Michael Caine
Mini Me: Verne Troyer
Basil Exposition: Michael York
Number Two: Robert Wagner
Frau Farbissna: Mindy Sterling
Running time -- 94 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 7/22/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
"Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" is bigger and funnier than the original film -- which means, of course, that the jokes are much worse. Few moviemakers have elevated sheer badness to a comic art form as have Mike Myers and his cohorts in the two "Austin Powers" films. Indeed, they have done the seemingly impossible: given badness -- dare we say it? -- a good name.
Every summer needs its silly movie, and at least until Adam Sandler turns up later this month, "Austin Powers" has the silly market cornered. Although at times numbingly one-notish and repetitive, this New Line release looks like it will shag a sizable boxoffice yield then turn into a highly rentable video.
The basic joke to the "Austin Powers" series lies in the transitory nature of pop culture. In our media-mad world, everything from the clothing and hairstyles to the social mores of a mere generation ago appears hilariously off-the-mark today. If you doubt this, just take a look at that photo in your high school yearbook.
So when Myers' James Bond-like character, a cryogenic relic of the Swinging '60s, is plunked down in the end-of-the-millennium London, he's a walking antiquity. Worse yet, Austin refuses to recognize that anything has changed.
The time-travel element from the original 1997 film gets overworked in the sequel as various time machines scoot people back and forth across three decades with a trip to the moon thrown in for good measure.
Sometimes this back-to-the-future zaniness sets up truly inspired comedy such as Rob Lowe playing a young Robert Wagner with deadly accuracy. (Is it a compliment to say an actor plays Robert Wagner very well?) But the film relies far too heavily on anachronisms, which grow increasingly flat as the movie wears on.
Myers and his writing partner, Michael McCullers, certainly know little if any shame in their pursuit of jokes in the bathroom, bedroom and anywhere else bad taste can prevail. There are more gags here about bodily functions than in a Farrelly brothers flick. There is even, God help us, a gerbil joke.
The movie eliminates Vanessa (Elizabeth Hurley) -- Austin's lust interest from the original film -- in the first scene, which permits him to take up with Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham). Felicity eagerly joins Austin's campaign to free the world from Dr. Evil (also played by Myers), whose plans for world domination inevitably run afoul of Austin's mojo.
So Dr. Evil time-travels back to the '60s to steal his nemesis' mojo. Austin follows him in his own time machine -- a psychedelic VW Beetle -- to get his mojo back and block Dr. Evil's plan to zap Earth from the moon with a laser (in 1969?). One could only wish Austin and Felicity also found time to eliminate the movie's most annoying character, Mini-Me (Verne J. Troyer), a pint-size clone of Dr. Evil.
In Austin Powers, Myers has clearly touched a comic nerve with audiences. By seeing James Bond not as a worldly sophisticate but rather as an ageless adolescent ruled by his genital urges, Myers has created a character that amuses men and convulses women. In also playing Dr. Evil and a new character, Fat Bastard, an obese Scottish spy, Myers further exploits his gifts for comic exaggeration.
But when one actor produces, writes and plays three parts, it tends to reduce his supporting cast to straight-man roles. The two actors who do manage to stand out are, interestingly enough, women. Graham's fab vixen exudes charm and wit. She is game for all the silliness but maintains a sweetness that is genuinely alluring.
And Mindy Sterling, a veteran actress and a member of the Groundlings improv troupe, makes Dr. Evil's henchwoman Frau Farbissina into an improbable but hilarious sex kitten.
The film also delights in its cameos with such people as Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello, Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson, Tim Robbins and Jerry Springer turning up either as themselves or as inspired casting.
As with the initial movie, Jay Roach's directorial style equates busyness with energy. He prefers visual onslaught to, say, the slapstick inventiveness of the Farrelly brothers or the subtle, multilayered gags of the early Zucker brothers.
There is also an inherent laziness born of the anything-can-happen approach. The moviemakers see no reason to explain how Frau Farbissina can witness Dr. Evil's rocket launch on Earth only to be present at his moon station when he arrives.
The gospel of badness is also honored by production designer Rusty Smith and cinematographer Ueli Steiger. Smith has outfitted a host of California locales and the Universal backlot to not even resemble '60s England in the slightest. (One can even glimpse the Hollywood Hills behind the London store fronts.) And Steiger uses high key lighting to capture the overripe Carnaby colors in all their true garishness.
The film's final moments leave the way open to further sequels -- at least until audiences cry uncle.
AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME
New Line Cinema
An Eric's Boy, Moving Pictures
and Team Todd production
A Jay Roach film
Producers: Suzanne Todd, Jennifer Todd, Demi Moore, Eric McLeod, John Lyons, Mike Myers
Director: Jay Roach
Writers: Mike Myers & Michael McCullers
Executive producers: Erwin Stoff, Michael De Luca, Donna Langley
Director of photography: Ueli Steiger
Production designer: Rusty Smith
Music: George S. Clinton
Casting: Juel Bestrop & Jeanne McCarthy
Costumes: Deena Appel
Editors: John Poll, Debra Neil-Fisher
Color/stereo
Cast:
Austin Powers/Dr. Evil/Fat Bastard: Mike Myers
Felicity Shagwell: Heather Graham
Basil Exposition: Michael York
Number Two: Robert Wagner
Young Number Two: Rob Lowe
Scott Evil: Seth Green
Frau Farbissina: Mindy Sterling
Mini-Me: Verne J. Troyer
Running time -- 95 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
Every summer needs its silly movie, and at least until Adam Sandler turns up later this month, "Austin Powers" has the silly market cornered. Although at times numbingly one-notish and repetitive, this New Line release looks like it will shag a sizable boxoffice yield then turn into a highly rentable video.
The basic joke to the "Austin Powers" series lies in the transitory nature of pop culture. In our media-mad world, everything from the clothing and hairstyles to the social mores of a mere generation ago appears hilariously off-the-mark today. If you doubt this, just take a look at that photo in your high school yearbook.
So when Myers' James Bond-like character, a cryogenic relic of the Swinging '60s, is plunked down in the end-of-the-millennium London, he's a walking antiquity. Worse yet, Austin refuses to recognize that anything has changed.
The time-travel element from the original 1997 film gets overworked in the sequel as various time machines scoot people back and forth across three decades with a trip to the moon thrown in for good measure.
Sometimes this back-to-the-future zaniness sets up truly inspired comedy such as Rob Lowe playing a young Robert Wagner with deadly accuracy. (Is it a compliment to say an actor plays Robert Wagner very well?) But the film relies far too heavily on anachronisms, which grow increasingly flat as the movie wears on.
Myers and his writing partner, Michael McCullers, certainly know little if any shame in their pursuit of jokes in the bathroom, bedroom and anywhere else bad taste can prevail. There are more gags here about bodily functions than in a Farrelly brothers flick. There is even, God help us, a gerbil joke.
The movie eliminates Vanessa (Elizabeth Hurley) -- Austin's lust interest from the original film -- in the first scene, which permits him to take up with Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham). Felicity eagerly joins Austin's campaign to free the world from Dr. Evil (also played by Myers), whose plans for world domination inevitably run afoul of Austin's mojo.
So Dr. Evil time-travels back to the '60s to steal his nemesis' mojo. Austin follows him in his own time machine -- a psychedelic VW Beetle -- to get his mojo back and block Dr. Evil's plan to zap Earth from the moon with a laser (in 1969?). One could only wish Austin and Felicity also found time to eliminate the movie's most annoying character, Mini-Me (Verne J. Troyer), a pint-size clone of Dr. Evil.
In Austin Powers, Myers has clearly touched a comic nerve with audiences. By seeing James Bond not as a worldly sophisticate but rather as an ageless adolescent ruled by his genital urges, Myers has created a character that amuses men and convulses women. In also playing Dr. Evil and a new character, Fat Bastard, an obese Scottish spy, Myers further exploits his gifts for comic exaggeration.
But when one actor produces, writes and plays three parts, it tends to reduce his supporting cast to straight-man roles. The two actors who do manage to stand out are, interestingly enough, women. Graham's fab vixen exudes charm and wit. She is game for all the silliness but maintains a sweetness that is genuinely alluring.
And Mindy Sterling, a veteran actress and a member of the Groundlings improv troupe, makes Dr. Evil's henchwoman Frau Farbissina into an improbable but hilarious sex kitten.
The film also delights in its cameos with such people as Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello, Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson, Tim Robbins and Jerry Springer turning up either as themselves or as inspired casting.
As with the initial movie, Jay Roach's directorial style equates busyness with energy. He prefers visual onslaught to, say, the slapstick inventiveness of the Farrelly brothers or the subtle, multilayered gags of the early Zucker brothers.
There is also an inherent laziness born of the anything-can-happen approach. The moviemakers see no reason to explain how Frau Farbissina can witness Dr. Evil's rocket launch on Earth only to be present at his moon station when he arrives.
The gospel of badness is also honored by production designer Rusty Smith and cinematographer Ueli Steiger. Smith has outfitted a host of California locales and the Universal backlot to not even resemble '60s England in the slightest. (One can even glimpse the Hollywood Hills behind the London store fronts.) And Steiger uses high key lighting to capture the overripe Carnaby colors in all their true garishness.
The film's final moments leave the way open to further sequels -- at least until audiences cry uncle.
AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME
New Line Cinema
An Eric's Boy, Moving Pictures
and Team Todd production
A Jay Roach film
Producers: Suzanne Todd, Jennifer Todd, Demi Moore, Eric McLeod, John Lyons, Mike Myers
Director: Jay Roach
Writers: Mike Myers & Michael McCullers
Executive producers: Erwin Stoff, Michael De Luca, Donna Langley
Director of photography: Ueli Steiger
Production designer: Rusty Smith
Music: George S. Clinton
Casting: Juel Bestrop & Jeanne McCarthy
Costumes: Deena Appel
Editors: John Poll, Debra Neil-Fisher
Color/stereo
Cast:
Austin Powers/Dr. Evil/Fat Bastard: Mike Myers
Felicity Shagwell: Heather Graham
Basil Exposition: Michael York
Number Two: Robert Wagner
Young Number Two: Rob Lowe
Scott Evil: Seth Green
Frau Farbissina: Mindy Sterling
Mini-Me: Verne J. Troyer
Running time -- 95 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 6/10/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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