Austin Powers in Goldmember [DVD] [2002]

The third is fantastic... funny, disgusting, clever and uplifting! Mini-Me and Fat B****** are back with even better gags and the usual crude humour from the latter!!! But Mike Myers has triumphed in adding the hilarious dutch roller skating villain "Goldmember!" And the casting of Michael Cane as Nigel Powers, Austins father... or farja if you're Goldmember... is excellent!

In her first acting role, Beyonce Knowles is brilliant and beautiful, with some great one liners and wild hair!

If you are a fan of Austin Powers... you will adore this film. If you didn't like the first two, you may not like this one as the humour carries the same vein and most of the original characters put in an appearance! If you haven't seen the first two... you may not get it!

Don't watch this film too seriously! Have a few drinks, a huge bucket of popcorn, loads of mates and just enjoy it! If you get the DVD... don't forget to check out the special features and extra scenes... extremely funny!

One question... when's Austin Powers 4 coming out?

Myers returns as the International man of mystery-Austin Powers, Dr. Evil as well as a host of new characters such as Goldmember. Myers' comedic performance pulls off all the stops to ensure that Goldmember would be a huge box office success. The introduction of inexperienced Pop-diva Beyonce Knowles was a suprise to some, as is her outstanding role as Foxxy Cleopatra.

Austin Powers in Goldmember could have either been a huge success or a huge failure, however with charismatic performances from the leading duo [Myers and Knowles] as well as from British-acting legend Michael Caine lending his experienced services, and a host of cameo appearances from Briteny Spears to Tom Cruise, make the third installment of Austin Powers hugely entertaining and a comical masterpiece.

Opening with an action-packed pre-credit James Bond like sequence, with cameos from many of Hollywood's biggest stars gets the movie off to a funny if somewhat irrelevant start, which is great if you like movies within movies, not so great if you don't. From there we get back into the real action with Dr Evil and Myer's latest character Goldmember (a Dutchman with a gold penis and bad skin, which he likes to eat) plotting once more to take over the world. So far so good you might think but herein one of the problems lies: the character Goldmember just isn't funny and is positively poor next to all of Mike Myers other characters, including a disappointingly under-used and very flatulent Fat Bastard who makes a welcome but all too brief return. There are some very funny visual and verbal gags of course and a few clever scenes that retrace Austin Powers and Dr Evil's childhoods but all in all there are just as many hits as misses and too many scenes that are obvious retreads of the previous movies most successful gags, such as the use of silhouettes, telling Sean to zip-it and the Jay-Z "It's A Hard Knock Life" routine. Okay so these scenes are still, to an extent, funny but nowhere near as funny as the first time you saw them.

As for the cast, Myer's is his usual brilliant comedic self, it's just that his self-penned lines are not as good as before. Verne Troyer is once again splendid as Mini Me and Destiny's child's Beyonce Knowles makes a sassy and sexy Foxy Cleopatra, whilst Seth Green (sporting a receding hairline) is quite fabulous as Dr Evil's son Sean. However, the star of the show in my view, is Michael Caine, with a marvellous comedic performance as Austin's father Nigel, delightfully sending up his Harry Palmer persona from the 1960's movies that first made him a star.

As for the movie as a whole, it is probably ideally suited to the DVD format more than any other movie out there, because on DVD you will be able to pick and choose which scenes you watch (and there are some very funny and very imaginative scenes). It is just that all n all you feel that you've seen it all before and seen it done better in the previous instalment. What is more the ending of the film suggests that not only is Mike Myers running out of new ideas for his spoof spy movies but that indeed it may be the end of this very profitable franchise. Still funny but not as funny as its predecessor: Three stars.