tek's rating: ½

Austin Powers in Goldmember (PG-13)
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Caution: spoilers, baby, yeah! (potentially)

This came out in 2002, but I didn't see it until 2013. Wow. Um... what to say? I loved the movie's framing device, but I don't want to say what that was. As for the movie's plot... hmmm. Felicity was gone, with no explanation. Um... Dr. Evil had yet another evil plot, of course, but Austin stopped it before it could even start. Dr. Evil and Mini-Me were sent to prison. However, soon after that, Austin's father, Nigel Powers (Michael Caine), who was also a superspy, was kidnapped. So Austin went to ask Dr. Evil for help figuring out where he was (which kinda reminded me of The Silence of the Lambs). Apparently, Nigel had been kidnapped by a villain called Goldmember (also Myers), and taken to 1975. So Austin went back in time to rescue him, and was reunited with an old flame (and FBI agent) named Foxxy Cleopatra (Beyoncé Knowles). Before they can rescue him, Goldmember goes to 2002 with Nigel. So Austin and Foxxy return to the present to try again to rescue him.

Meanwhile, Dr. Evil and Mini-Me escape from prison, and work with Goldmember on his plan to crash a meteor into the Earth or whatever. But all this is sort of beside the point. More than ever before in the Austin Powers franchise, this movie just seems like an excuse for a bunch of gags (many of them recycled from the previous movies). Everything was tremendously self-referential. And there was plenty of lampshade-hanging. There was also lots of "daddy issues," with Austin feeling unloved by Nigel, Scott feeling unloved by Dr. Evil, then Mini-Me feeling unloved by Dr. Evil. And ultimately, a revelation that I'm absolutely not going to spoil, but it was redonkulous. Seriously, everything about the movie reached new levels of redonkulousness. So I couldn't love the movie as a whole, as I did the first two, but it was still pretty funny. I mean, a lot of it was; some of it was too tired to be truly funny, but there was at least as much that worked as there was that didn't. (For the most part, Goldmember himself didn't, IMO.)

And I dunno what else to say. The end... drastically changes the entire dynamic of the series, but it's still possible there could be a fourth movie, and I'm sure it'd be good. Especially if Scott becomes the main villain (the final scene reminds me of the end of Kick-Ass, which came out like eight years after this, but I saw that first, of course). Anyway, probably the best thing about the movie was the cast. In addition to those I've mentioned, there was Fred Savage, a very brief but amusing appearance by Masi Oka, Britney Spears, a bunch of cool cameos from the framing device, plus the Osbournes (doing probably the best lampshade-hanging in the movie). Oh, and also Quincy Jones, appropriately enough.


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spy index
International Man of Mystery * The Spy Who Shagged Me * Goldmember