It's golden and groovy, baby

Austin Powers is back with a sexy sidekick from the '70s and surprises galore

07/26/2002

BY MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

Austin Powers in Goldmember is the funniest entry in Mike Myers's shagadelic spy series starring the toothy, ascot-wearing, chick-chasing, mod super spy.

No dawdling here. Goldmember comes out of the gate at a gallop with an extremely clever and funny spoof of the prologues that open all the James Bond films. Austin drops from the skies over Utah in his British flag parachute, heading for a landing in his Shaguar sports car, also painted in the St. George's Cross motif, which is tooling on its own through Monument Valley. A helicopter gunship tries to blast him out of the skies, but Austin is prepared. After all, the lovely Dixie Normous is waiting for him below. But so is -- uh-oh -- Dr. Evil.

It's a wild, very funny ride and then -- blam! -- Myers takes it one giant leap to even zanier heights with surprises galore that will startle moviegoers, make them laugh and even cause them to wonder what the heck is going on here.

Let's just say that Austin Powers, Dr. Evil and a late-in-the-film return of Fat Bastard as a Sumo wrestler aren't the only familiar characters in Goldmember. The movie is peppered with familiar surprise cameo appearances by guest stars, some of whom you might not recognize. Katie Couric, the unctuously perky sob sister of NBC's Today, prostituted herself once again for her show, this time doing a walk-on in the movie which she turned into a segment for her Today. Good thing she previewed it on TV. She's otherwise unrecognizable as a tough cop who delivers one line.

Many of the lines in Austin Powers in Goldmember are double entendres that are hilarious in the movie's context.

On the down side, there's also an awful lot of toilet humor sprung throughout the film. Most of it goes on way too long. Most innocent are all the many riffs played on the title of Dr. Evil's plan to blast a gold-filled meteor out of its orbit and send it crashing into Earth where it will melt the polar ice caps unless he gets a "billion-gazillion-shmillion dollars." He calls the plan Preparation H.

Some judicious editing of the toilet humor would have made the whole film much funnier, although I'm not sure that even a smidgen of the sight and sounds of Fat Bastard sitting on a latrine could have been turned into something truly ticklish for anyone beyond a 10-year-old mentality. This, plus the many scenes involving urination, are low blows to an otherwise laugh-filled movie.

Yet, you never know. A shadow-play sequence done from behind an infirmary screen by Austin and Mini-Me (Verne Troyer), Dr. Evil's irrepressible pint-sized clone, begins as mildly amusing. It quickly degenerates into overkill that tries too hard. Just when all seems lost, however, Myers and Troyer pull a stunt that turns out to be one of the movie's biggest, laugh-out-loud moments.

Director Jay Roach tries to keep the film's complex plot straight, not always with the greatest success. It revolves around Dr. Evil time traveling back to 1975 to retrieve a gold-plated Dutchman, Johann Van der Smut (also Mike Myers), who has a Midas touch. He even wears gold-plated wooden shoes. Dr. Evil also kidnaps Austin's master spy father, Nigel (Michael Caine), to keep Austin at bay.

Austin, riding a pimpmobile time machine, travels back to 1975 himself, where he meets Foxxy Cleopatra (the lovely Beyonce Knowles of the Destiny's Child songbird group) in a disco and takes her back to the future to help him thwart Dr. Evil. A cleverly funny scene has the undercover Foxxy, dressed seductively like the Foxxy Brown character of '70s blaxploitation films, surreptitiously speaking to Austin through a man (another surprise guest star) whom she uses like a ventriloquist's dummy.

There are many startling situations in Austin Powers in Goldmember to keep it percolating. A change of heart -- and sides -- for Mini-Me. Redemption and recognition for Dr. Evil's cocky son, Scott (Seth Green). A surprise announcement by Nigel that turns everything upside down. Even a quick appearance by Godzilla who, because of copyright laws, can't be called Godzilla.

These things and the film's many inventively wacky moments pull it over the rough spots. Tough-looking prison inmates sing a hip-hop version of It's a Hard Knock Life, the orphan song from Annie. Parts of the English subtitles for Japanese dialogue fade into white backgrounds, skewering them into naughty phrases. A large, hairy mole on a man's face becomes the central focus of Austin's stares.

Check your inhibitions and political correctness at the door. In Austin Powers in Goldmember nothing is sacred.

Austin Powers in Goldmember

Starring: Mike Myers, Mike Myers, Mike Myers, Mike Myers, Michael Caine, Beyonce Knowles, Michael York, Robert Wagner.

Rated: PG-13, contains violence, adult themes, naughty double entendres.