Cast: Mike Myers, Beyonce, Michael Caine
Genre: Spoof comedy
Year: 2002
Austin Powers is one of the most famous spoof editions of James Bond, yet throughout, it slowly deteriorates in terms of humour and doesn't fully understand what it is trying to be.
Mike Myers for voicing many famous comedic people such as Shrek and Wayne from 'Wayne's World'. Another one of his most notable performances is of the 007 spoof, Austin Powers. 'Goldmember' is clearly mimicking the brilliant Bond film 'Goldfinger'. The film is very funny for the first act with silly jokes and a fantastic opening scene which is hilarious. However, in the second and third act, the humour dries up, becomes unfunny and dirty and the plot becomes predictable and bland.
The best part of this film is the opening scene, spoofing the opening scenes in James Bond films where the audience sees the previous mission the agent has just completed. The opening scene is made excellent by the vast amount of cameos which keep appearing in the films first 15 minutes. Tom Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, Britney Spears and even Steven Spielberg appear as surprising cameos. The opening credits is funny and exciting with Powers meeting several of the cameos and this light-hearted, fun spirit continues throughout this first section, with good exposition into Austin's unstable relationship with his father (acted by the brilliant Michael Caine- however, his ability isn't used to its fullest potential and this might be seen as a slight waste of talent, but he does his best).
The plot is about how the infamous Dr. Evil is trying to destroy the world; however, he needs Goldmember to assist him. Goldmember lives in the 1970s and Dr. Evil must retrieve him in order to activate his machine. Austin Powers infiltrates Dr. Evil's lair and arrests him; however, he discovers his father has been assassinated by some goonies of Goldmember. He meets with Dr. Evil to try and get information and realises he too must travel back in time to kill Goldmember, saving his father, Nigel Powers.
There are many plotholes which appear, such as how fast it takes for Austin to happily start travelling back in time. It feels too quick a transition between Austin knowing he must travel back in time, to him doing so. Nobody from 1975 (the year in which Austin travels back to) seems at all affected by his appearance. His father shows no signs of concern that he has just met his son 30 years early and the relationship between Austin and Foxy Cleopatra (another film with Beyonce in) seems rushed.
The jokes quickly run flat. After a splendid beginning of funny jokes and puns, these soon become oversexualised or annoying, most notably the frustrating repetition of the 'mole' pun. Basically, there is a man who is initially a supposed employee of Dr. Evil who has a large, noticeable, hairy mole on his upper lip in which some of the characters are utterly disgusted by. This was funny the first time with Dr. Evil reacting to it and still fairly humorous with Austin's reaction the first time, but after the next two or three times, the joke is annoying, stupid and has completely dried up. It feels as if the script doesn't know where to go and reverts to an original laugh to extends the scene. Even more frustrating is that this character is actually an undercover agent posing as Dr. Evil's employee, therefore he is a 'mole'. There is a 2 minutes sequence of somebody explaining this, in which the audience have already become aware of.
The ending is lazily done. There is an abrupt plot twist, which doesn't hold as much meaning as it could have done and feels completely out of the blue. Similarly the majority of the jokes here and boring and bland and don't feel necessary. At the same time, the plot feels almost completely disregarded as the screenplay finds some way to quickly tie up all loose ends.
Ultimately, this film starts off great but soon falls flat on its face, with some lazy script writing and not a very clever plot. A film that might be more enjoyable than this is 'The Naked Gun' or 'Airplane!', two spectacular spoof films which maintain their humour throughout. Similarly, 'Men in Black 3' has a similar premise and is much more successful.
Verdict: 5/10
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