Fellman's Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

The third installment of the Austin Powers trilogy, Austin Powers in Goldmember, is slightly funnier than the second one. But not by much. It’s still mostly the same recycled jokes and canned ideas put into new cans that the second movie had. Only, this time, there was some more originality in the script. I will give them that. They at least accomplished something as writers that they barely could last time. And that’s put some new quality material into the movie. A lot of the movie isn’t quality. A lot of the movie is still pretty bad. But there are some new funny gags here and there. I laughed a couple times. Not many, but a few… 

What’s it about? The movie starts with Steven Spielberg making a movie about Austin Powers and he’s shooting the opening credits for it as Austin is watching. He asks Austin what he thinks before Austin goes into a musical montage of his own, opening the actual movie. From his new lair behind the Hollywood sign, Dr. Evil unveils his new plan for world domination. Traveling back in time to find a Dutch, gold-obsessed villain and partnering with him to pull a meteor of solid gold into the Earth. Later, Austin is knighted by the Queen for his service to the crown but is disappointed when his father doesn’t show up for the ceremony. At a party, after the event, Austin is about to engage in a lifelong dream of having a three-way with Japanese twins when he’s interrupted by Basil Exposition and told that his father’s been kidnapped. Austin seeks the help of Dr. Evil to find his kidnapped father, as he was just arrested by the Ministry of Defense. Dr. Evil tells Austin to go to 1975 and Goldmember’s roller disco club. Which leads Austin to meet Foxxy Cleopatra. Goldmember and Nigel, Austin’s father, headed back to 2002 to stay in Dr. Evil’s new lair near Tokyo. Austin and Foxxy travel to Tokyo where Fat Bastard is now a sumo wrestler. They fight Fat Bastard and he reveals that a Japanese businessman named Mr. Roboto is working on a device for Dr. Evil. Austin and Foxxy meet with Mr. Roboto who lies with them and tells them he doesn’t know anything. Goldmember then takes the device that Roboto was making, and the golden key needed to start the device and heads to Dr. Evil’s submarine. At this point, Scott has begun to turn evil and Dr. Evil trades him for Mini Me. This causes Mini Me to switch sides and defect to the MOD. Austin, Foxxy, and Mini Me infiltrate Dr. Evil’s submarine and Austin gets captured. But, before Dr. Evil can activate the tractor beam, Foxxy steals the key and frees Austin. He prepares to shoot Dr. Evil when Nigel shows up and tells him that Dr. Evil is his brother and Nigel’s son as well. Goldmember uses his gold penis to activate the tractor beam. And Austin and Dr. Evil work together to stop Goldmember and save the world.  

What’s good? There are some good jokes in there. I laughed a couple of times. Not a whole lot. But there’s a handful of jokes that are worth laughing at. Most of it’s just pandering. 

What’s bad? The writing, the acting, even the midget they got to come in and do the stunts for Verne Troyer wasn’t that great.  

The acting? I don’t think they’re trying to be bad in this one. I think they’re trying to do a good movie. Which is what makes it even harder to tell if they’re doing a bad job or not. I know Dr. Evil is supposed to be overly exaggerated, and I know Austin is supposed to be making those odd facial expressions, but isn’t it a little TOO much, now? 

The effects? The effects in this movie are fine. They’re looking like anything else looked in the year 2002. Things were blowing up and things were on screen, and everything looked just fine.  

Cramming popular stuff. It looked like they were just trying to cram as much popular stuff as they could fit onto the screen at the same time, for no reason whatsoever. Having The Osbourne’s do a cameo for no reason? What for? What was Brittney Spears doing there? No reason. Tom Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny Devito, Kevin Spacey? Just have them there to have them there? 

How many backflips? How many backflips did that person do in a row in that opening segment? Like, 15? That’s like a Tilt-A-Whirl… I’m impressed, seriously. That’s kind of ridiculous…  

Where’s Number 2’s scars? What happened to Number 2’s giant scars from the second movie? Did they just heal? Is he just fine now? Is nobody talking about that? 

Repetitive jokes. They just dig up the old jokes that worked in the last movie and use them again. Or the old jokes that supposedly worked. When in reality, they were just rehashed trash from the old script that they dug up and put to work for this new piece of garbage.  

Unoriginal writing. There’s some original writing in this movie. Very little of it. But most of it is either predictable nonsense or plagiarized crap.  

Doesn’t make much sense. A lot of it comes out of nowhere and goes right back there again. I feel like a lot of scenes are more of transitions than actual scenes. Like a Monty Python sketch.  

Michael McDonald again. Michael Mcdonald is there in the beginning when Austin is being knighted. He’s holding the pillow while the Queen is knighting Austin. He’s in all three Austin Powers movies. Michael McDonald, you old dog… 

Japanese twins. Things to do before I die, have a three-way with Japanese twins… Almost had it crossed off, Austin… Almost had it crossed off… 

The blatant Harry Potter rip-off. As Dr. Evil and Austin were back in whatever school that was supposed to be, it was the most blatant Harry Potter rip-off ever. They were even dressed like some of the kids from the Harry Potter books. The one kid had his hat turned kind of sideways. I don’t know the correlating kid in the Harry Potter books, but he’s there… 

Basic improv skills. As they worked backwards from Austin getting knighted to talking to Dr. Evil to getting his award and onward and onward, it was nothing more than simple improv skills. This script could’ve been written in a few days’ time.  

Talking in British gibberish. One of the few actually funny gags in the movie was when Austin and Nigel are talking in British gibberish to each other, and they have the American subtitles down at the bottom. And there’s a long period of time where there’s just “?????” and it ends with “and they shat on a turtle!” Who knows what British people are talking about… 

And the Dutch. Nigel hates the Dutch. Because don’t we all? (I kid, I kid…) But he lets it be known, throughout the movie, his distaste for Goldmember and his Dutch origins… 

He starts rapping. For no reason whatsoever, Dr. Evil breaks into what is essentially a rap music video of “hard knock life”. He did the same thing in the last movie with “Just the Two of Us”. It wasn’t funny the last time either. I don’t know why they thought it would be funny this time.  

The mole jokes. They really played up that “mole” joke. Like, they went all out on that joke. He worked for both sides and they both did the joke. I don’t know if that went as planned, either.  

Does Dr. Evil have three balls? They slipped that third testicle joke in there just to see if anyone would notice, I think.  

He makes Mini Me leave. Dr. Evil makes Mini Me leave after calling Scott to come sit next to him. This makes Mini Me trade sides and join the MOD, betraying Dr. Evil. 

International copyright laws. As long as it looks enough like Godzilla that you know they’re trying to make you think it’s Godzilla, but it doesn’t look enough like Godzilla that you actually THINK it’s Godzilla, everything is kosher. International copyright laws are all about nuance. That’s why they could make toys in China in the 90s called “Super Rangers” that looked exactly like the “Power Rangers” but weren’t.  

Recycled jokes. By the end of the movie, they had used all the successful jokes from the last movie that they could fit in. They were probably trying as hard as they could to write more script, so they fit in more jokes from the last movie. 

Hackneyed, unoriginal, uninspired, very weak ending. That was literally one of the worst endings I’ve ever seen. Talk about just a poor excuse for a way out. It’s a shame that Mike Myers wrote that first movie and then wrote these other two travesties because these are the two that he’s going to be known for.  

So, save yourself the trouble and don’t see Austin Powers in Goldmember. You’ll be saving yourself an hour and a half. I mean, you can watch it if you want to see how bad it is. It’s really up to you. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…