Austin Powers › Goldmember / Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER, the third movie in the Austin Powers series, stars Mike Myers in director Jay Roach's James Bond, Sci-Fi, 1970s, funkadelic formula--a hyper-stylized backdrop to what is ultimately Myers's one-man show.

GOLDMEMBER is a family affair. Austin has a few unresolved issues with his dear old dad, Nigel Powers (the dead ringer Michael Caine, who is also a good sport), and he hopes to work out some Freudian tension when he's not saving the world from the forces of evil. Myers flexes his actor muscles and portrays a more thoughtful and--is it even possible'--a slightly less geeky Austin in this film. Likewise, even the bad guys show some new personality: Dr. Evil reveals a penchant for talking like a wise-ass hip-hop homeboy, and the new villain Goldmember (the latest in Myers' repertoire) is an enigmatic amputee with a heart of gold who speaks with a Dutch accent and eats his own peeling skin. If that's not disgusting enough, Fat Bastard, the greasy behemoth from the THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME, appears again in GOLDMEMBER, delving into new and nasty scatological territory. But the joke's on us, because GOLDMEMBER's toilet humor is so extreme that keeps viewers dissolved into a harmless fit of giggles from start to finish.

AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY is the first in the comic series starring this bodacious 1960s spy played by the hilarious Mike Myers. Decked out in the gaudiest mod attire--ruffled shirts, tight-fitting candy-colored suits, horn-rimmed glasses, and prosthetic teeth--Austin Powers is anything but subtle. His near-constant exclamations of "Groovy, baby," accompanied an uncandid flash of his flirtatious smile, only add to his wonderfully exaggerated hipster persona. Plotwise, Austin Powers and his enemy Dr. Evil (also played by Myers) awake from 30 years of frozen, cryogenic sleep to find themselves in the year 1997. A conniving Dr. Evil plots a reign of terror and mass destruction, but finds that his ideas and methods are a bit out of date. Our hero encounters a similar situation, realizing that he is definitely behind the times. A series of well-meaning though bumbling efforts to thwart the insidious Dr. Evil keeps Austin Powers and his devastatingly beautiful partner, Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley), hard at work as they travel from London to Las Vegas. With this tongue-in-cheek send-up of James Bond spy films and 1960s clichés, director Jay Roach complements Myers' over-the-top performance with a lighthearted soundtrack, fun photography, and amusingly retro sets.

Adventure | London, England | Nostalgic | Time Travel