Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I’m working on my own GOLDMEMBER review right now, but here’s a whole mess of ‘em for right now. Reactions are all over the map on this one, and it doesn’t surprise me. Comedy is as subjective a thing as we have in film. What makes one person weep with laughter leaves another person cold or, even worse, annoyed.
First up, we’ve got everybody’s favorite crusty seaman, one of the all-stars of AICN, Quint:
Ahoy my groovy squirts! 'Tis I, everybody's favorite shagadelic crusty ol' seaman, Quint, here with a little look at the new Austin Powers flick, GOLDMEMBER.
I haven't read any other reviews for the film, but I'm sure everybody's abuzz about the brilliant opening sequence. They're right. The opening sequence is funnier than anything in any of the other Austin Powers films, filled to the brim with smartly placed cameos and great dance numbers. Unfortunately, after the fantastic opening, there's a 10-15 minute lull of comedy. There are a few smile only gags and a whole helluva lot of eye-rolling or cringe-worthy retreads of jokes from the previous two films. I understand that director Jay Roach and Mike Myers were trying to rollover the jokes from the previous films in order to tie them all together, but with the exception of some of the gags that happen later in the film all the retreaded jokes fall flat.
I was hoping against hope, wishing against wish that the movie wasn't going to keep getting more and more winky-winky at itself, self-conscience to the point of not having anything original and funny. We are introduced to Foxy Cleopatra, played by the hottie-bo-bottie Beyonce Knowles. She has some spunk and has a pretty damn decent song to sing that captures a bit of the soul of some of those great '70s funk songs, not to mention a pretty funny bit with Nathan Lane. Not bad, but still not enough to lift GOLDMEMBER back up past decent. We are introduced to Goldmember himself shortly after Foxy. He's a very mediocre character... Weird, but in a weird way, not a funny way.
Oh shit, I thought. The title character sucks, the movie had a flash of hilarity at the beginning, but has been headed downhill ever since. What could save it? I got two words for you: Michael Caine. The appearance of Caine as Austin's daddy, Nigel Powers, marks the point in the film where everything heads back up to hilarity. Caine is suave, slick and a great smart-ass. I love him in this film. Thank you, Mr. Caine! You helped save this film!
Not only do you have Caine ruling at this point, but you have a great flash-back sequence following young Austin and young Master Evil, roommates in school. They're friends, but also in competition over the school's top honor, the position of International Man of Mystery. This sequence is very funny and has a cameo by the most often seen extra in the history of movies. You know who you are!
You also have Verne Troyer working his magic. I've long held my belief that midgets and monkeys can elevate any movie by at least 1 star, 2 stars if they're in a comedy. Verne is hands down the funniest little man in films right now. There are a few scenes, including a retread of the silhouette gag from THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME that actually works, that had me doubled over, laughing long into the next scene. It'd be a crime to spoil these sequences for you folks, just take my word for it... Troyer is comedic gold in this film and is worth every single penny he was paid.
We're introduced to a bevy of new characters, like the Japanese businessman Mr. Roboto (if you don't see that joke coming, I don't know what to say), as well as some old friends like Fat Bastard, Scotty Evil, etc... Sadly missing from this film, though, is Will Ferrell's Moustapha character. But I can't complain... I got Ozzy and family in a really fuckin' funny cameo.
Anyway, I do recommend this flick, just be warned there is that lull between the great intro scene and the introduction of Nigel Powers. You've been warned... Grab some popcorn, hit the john, finger your lady or your ass or the stranger sitting next to you... Whatever floats your boat. Once you make it through that rocky patch, you're gonna be rewarded with some of the best damn dick and fart jokes to hit the screens since their heyday of the early '80s.
I'll be back soon, squirts... I've got some treats hidden up my crusty sleeve, including a review of that animatronic bear flick, Sham-a-lamb-a-ding-dong's newest masterpiece and a couple of interviews. 'Til that day, this is Quint bidding you a fond farewell and adieu.
Quick!! Peel some of my skin and eat it!! It's salty goodness!!
Next up is PoleOfJustice, a fairly new spy/talkbacker who’s been weighing in a lot lately:
PoleOfJustice again, ranting about stuff I gotta watch whether I like it or not.
My friend Fes has a saying: “It doesn’t have to be good to be a good time.” He usually evokes this maxim when trying to convince me to go to one of those Gawdawful 80s metal reunion shows he inexplicably attends. And while nothing short of a million dollars and a night of hot monkey sex with Franka Potente would get me to go see Wasp in the year 2002, I have to say I agree with the sentiment.
Crap can be endearing, and while GOLDMEMBER has many moments which are indeed painful, I still had an objectively better time watching this than I did watching a lot of “good” movies. The plot is as follows: Dr Evil has….um….well, Austin’s Dad has been….er….
OK, I confess: I don’t have the slightest recollection of the “plot.” But unlike MEN IN BLACK II, where my lapse of memory was brought on by sheer lack of interest, the reason I don’t remember jack about GOLDMEMBER is that the individual scenes are actually funny enough that you don’t care how you got there.
A bit of history: loved the first one, thought the second one was inert (like….well, like MIB II, actually.) I know a lot of people have the opposite view of the first two, but hey, like Roger Ebert says: you can’t argue with humor. I laughed at the first, didn’t at the second. I laughed my ass off on this one. Personally, this is my favorite of the three, which is pretty damned surprising considering I was expecting this to put me to sleep. It doesn’t drag like the slower moments of the first (and almost all of the second, again, IMHO.) I think, paradoxically, this is due to the almost complete lack of coherence. At no point did I have any idea what the Hell was going on, and that just freed me up to laugh at the fart jokes and cameos.
A word about the cameos: maybe some were removed, maybe they were just overhyped, but this was not the cavalcade of random stars I was led to believe. The vast majority of them were in the first ten minutes (which, I must say, was possibly the most hysterical thing I’ve seen in a Hell of a long time.) Part of me wanted to hate this film for parading around celebrities like they were a substitute for jokes, but, shockingly, the jokes actually worked. Besides: BRITNEY SPEARS’ HEAD EXPLODES. That alone makes it worth seeing.
Even the recycled jokes were not as voluminous as I had thought they would be. They even poke fun at themselves for it (and in the process get Ozzy Osbourne to speak the only coherent words I’ve ever seen him speak.) The Scott Evil SHHH thing is no more extended here than it was in the trailer (THANK F#%KING GOD,) and Fat Bastard is reduced to a glorified cameo (again, THANK F%^KING GOD.)
So, the bad parts? The Goldmember character, while indeed bearing a striking resemblance to Gert Frobe, is just dumb. Not obnoxious dumb, just lame. He rather obviously exists just so they could use his name for the title. Michael Caine is underused. REALLY underused. Beyonce Knowles, whom I was expecting to be a block of wood, is also underused. I know nothing whatsoever about her, outside of her involvement in a bunch of records I don’t listen to, so maybe she’s just playing herself. Whatever the case may be, she managed to channel Pam Grier, and did it (1) without being pandering or kitschy, and (2) did it without a whole lot of screen time. Seriously, how many musicians turned actors can you name that didn’t make you cringe? Will Smith and (sometimes) David Bowie. Name another. Cleopatra Jones ain’t exactly an Oscar nabbing role, but she’s better than that kind of role warrants.
Sorry to be so abstract, but (to paraphrase Brian Eno) writing about comedy is like dancing about architecture, and since this is a film built almost entirely on sight gags and comic timing, there just ain’t a whole lot of specifics I can get into without just giving a blow by blow account. All I can really say is I walked in expecting to be kinda bored, and walked out surprised. I wouldn’t have seen this at all, if we hadn’t gotten four copies that all had to be checked before tomorrow. A happy accident, that. Maybe I should just stop having expectations, since the movies I look forward to with baited breath (ROAD TO PERDITION, MIB II, and a Sci-Fi film which I have bashed on WAY too much in the talkbacks) leave me cold, whereas the ones I could’ve cared less about (this, REIGN OF FIRE) are the ones that kick my ass. Huh. Weird.
PoleOfJustice, out.
This next guy might actually be Mike Myers under an assumed name, based on how much he loved the film:
I would call it "ironic" how 97% of the comedy movies that do heavy promotion on the Comedy Central channel turn out to be the worst movies of the year-That is, I 'would' except that the word "irony" implies humor, of which we established there is none.
And even though AUSTIN POWERS 3: GOLDMEMBER has been following suit (like a mutha'), I don't think you should let that or it's trailers –which scream "this the whole concept is played out"- ruin the movie for you. And I personally refuse to tell you anything about the movie and on the chance that I might ruin it for you...
...Aw, but it has such a cool opening sequence, and all!! Austin Powers parachutes down into his car, the Shaguar, and faces off with an army helicopter, then uses his ejector seat to fly over it and shoots the pilot...and when he lands he...he...um...
Y'know what? If I tell you what happens next I'll totally ruin it for you and I...am...NOT...gonna ruin it for you!
Tell you what. I'll talk about something completely unrelated. I'll just tell you about an old writer's trick (that was taught to me by an old writer):
Your script can have your characters get into the most ludicrous situations, bend the laws of physics or make the worst jokes ever and the audience will still buy it as long as some character in the story acknowledges how strange/ridiculous/unfunny it is.
It's a sneaky little trick that works so well because it makes the viewer feel like the writer was in on the joke and they can relax. However, I recently found out that the technique doesn't hold up to being repeated every three and a half minutes within a full length feature film as they do it in GOLDMEMBER. At the point where "Scott Evil" rolls his eyes and tells Dr.Evil that his "Shhh!" routine is predictable and lame he may as well have changed his name to "Scott Obvious-thirty minutes ago".
Oh Geez, I feel like I'm starting to ruin it...c'mon, think...think...ah!
Okay. Okay, I'm sure I still haven't ruined the movie for the fans of The Benny Hill Show.
That's right. And everybody, except women ...well, old women, love Benny Hill. I know I have, ever since high school. Sure, it was all retreads of burlesque and vaudeville routines, but he was so cute doing them. Plus, the show was from the late 60's and had an "Awww, they didn't know any better" type charm.
I feel confident that I have not yet ruined GOLDMEMBER for you if you like...no, love Benny Hi--seriously, I mean really LOVE (as in, would've thrown your body onto the casket at his funeral) Benny Hill! Then it won't bother you at all that GOLDMEMBER comes down to being nothing more than 90 minutes of Mike Meyers warming over old Benny Hill gags. Hey, we're talking comedy that hasn't been cutting edge since the 1940's!
Uh...I still don't think this is going like I want it to.
I'm probably giving you the impression that I don't like any of the Austin Powers movies. That simply is not so. I loved and even bought a copy of the second one, THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME. And I...uh, liked the first one.
I saw it late, after everybody had already told me how "great" it was...And I did think it was a great idea and about an hour of it really focused on that. But the other 30 minutes was just filler and Mike Meyer warming over old Benny Hill gags...
...Is there an echo in here? That's it, no more mentioning enny-Bay ill-Hay.
And let us not forget one of my favorite movies of this summer, UNDERCOVER BROTHER. A movie that effortlessly used the Austin Powers blueprint and was vastly superior in every way...Uh..um, but...keep in mind it had the unfair advantage using wit, social commentary and a more relevant source of parody...
*sigh* Okay, no more mentioning UB either.
Tell you what, from now on I'm only gonna talk about the positive things I found in GOLDMEMBER. How 'bout that?:
"Moi-kuhl Kyne!" - Sorry, I meant Michael Caine and the expert casting of him as Austin's father, Nigel Powers. In a number of movies in the mid 60's Michael Caine played British super-spy Harry Palmer (THE IPCRESS FILES, BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN), a character who was no doubt a huge influence on the creation of Austin Powers. In GOLDMEMBER Caine threatens to steal every scene he's in and is so dead-on that you almost don't notice just how good he is. Another reason you almost don't notice is that he's only in maybe four scenes. What starts as the main plot, Nigel's kidnapping, get relegated to subplot and then forgotten plot device.
...Mmmm...let's move on...
It's a great excuse to get Beyoncé into a gold bikini!- Even Ray Charles can see that singer Beyoncé Knowles (Destiny's Child) is fine as vintage wine, but who would've guessed she could act? She takes on the roll of Austin Powers' new blaxploitation partner/ love interest, Foxy Cleopatra, as if singing was just a hobby. I don't think there's any better measure of an actors ability than how well they can look 'natural' when there's nothing to do --And given that after the first couple of "Shazams!" and judo chops Beyoncé is given absolutely nothing to do, outside of riding in the passenger's seat and asking setup questions, she's excellent!
Have you noticed something, though? Between Beyoncé here, Aunjanue Ellis in UNDERCOVER BROTHER, and Rosario Dawson in MEN IN BLACK 2 and the upcoming PLUTO NASH, this summer Hollywood finally seems to be recognizing sexy black women! It's like they're becoming the new 'Latinas'. I'm delighted!!...and shocked, 'cause I just knew it was gonna be Indian chicks next...
Oops! Did I just mention UNDERCOVER BROTHER again?...Dammit!...Moving on.
Next topic...
Mike Meyers plays four characters at once!- Besides the underwritten Austin Powers, the desperately unfunny Dr. Evil and the purely obligatory cameo of Fat Bastard, Mike Meyers also appears as the titular character Goldmember: A Dutch-born, discothèque-owning, megalomaniacal (not dissimilar from the role Meyers played in 54) contortionist. With his ultra-thick accent and fetish for gold and eating flaking skin, Goldmember is a character whom no one obviously developed past deciding on a name for him. After his roller boogie intro scene he quickly goes from being the main villain (remember the title of the movie?) to being less of an entity than the Shaguar.
Can't save that one...
It's got the same Mike Meyers comedy-stylings we've come to depend on- True, to some Mike Meyers' comedy is all mugging at the camera and piss jokes, but to others he's a genius. All of his movies exist on a grid of overworking a simple formula and the schematic for this can be found in one of the early gags in WAYNE'S WORLD:
Wayne and Garth pull up next to a Rolls Royce and motion to the passenger to roll down his window. Once he complies, Wayne, in an affected voice asks, "Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?"
It's ingenious! You see what just happened there? He got you to laugh without having to put any work into writing an actual joke. He simply regurgitated an old amusing TV commercial and got you laugh solely on the basis of nostalgia, yet you attach those good feelings to WAYNE'S WORLD.
This harkens back to Pepsi getting Michael Jackson to do their commercials back when he was hot...
People feel good when they see Michael
People see Michael with Pepsi
People now see Pepsi and think of Michael
People feel good when they see Pepsi
Scoff all you wish, but it caused Pepsi's sales to rise dramatically, despite the well-known fact that Michael Jackson doesn't even drink soda at all. It's all a persuasion/manipulation technique known as "anchoring". Mike Meyers has cut out the whole antiquated process of writing jokes and taken it to the level of the cinematic equivalent of Hip Hop sampling. And he's not the only genius to use this well past its 'recommended dosage'. You'll notice beer commercials and Adam Sandler doing the same thing with classic rock tunes.
Wow, doesn't that make you feel good that you helped turn all these people into multi-millionaires?
The Osbournes- Sure, as long as you're anchoring why not throw in a cameo appearance from the stars of the hottest show on cable television. The most interesting thing here in Ozzy Osbourne's delivery is not that he's the umpteenth person within the movie to point out how lame the movie is (I'm not kidding, they beat that into the ground ...uh, more than I have), but the outtakes during the end credits where it takes him nearly thirteen tries to say his one line correctly. It's maybe the one moment of genuine comedy.
Okay, I'm not sure how bad I screwed up here, but I'm optimistic that I've left the movie salvageable for some people. Just because I personally thought it was one of the worst movies of the year doesn't mean that you shouldn't see it.
Why, I'd wager that if you haven't seen UNDERCOVER BROTHER, don't remember Mike Meyers from SNL, have a fetish for Benny Hill and bodily functions, think jokes are overrated, feel concern for Seth Green since the cancellation of Greg the Bunny, still had questions from the first two movies, got in for free, thought you were getting roped into the seeing the new HALLOWEEN movie with the other Michael Meyers, the A/C in your car is busted, didn't have to arrange for a babysitter, AND (not "or") you went to a theater two blocks from your house ...this could very well be the movie you've been waiting for all summer.
Yeah, baby!!
-MARTIN THOMAS
It’s like a wet sloppy kiss. It’s embarassing. Please... stop. We get it. You love the movie.
Last up today is John Vick Shade, or “Shade,” as we know him in TalkBack:
SPOILERS!!!
The best advice I can give viewers going into AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER is, get in, and get back out before the opening credits are over. The first five minutes, featuring [SPOILER DELETED] & Co., is hilairous. Savor it, and then go ask for your money back. Lie and say somebody was talking on a cell phone, if you have to. Most theaters will give you a refund. Then, go home, and if you have it, watch the first movie on DVD. I think you'll be glad you did. For those of you who choose to stay, however, there are a handful of pros. There are some very attractive women in the movie; there's an amusing gag about white English subtitles; and, there's a mildly funny musical number involving Dr. Evil and Mini-Me in prison....
...you know what? I honestly can't think of any other pros. Beyond the couple of things I mentioned, this is quite possibly the most unfunny movie I've ever seen in my life. Yes, this year has produced horrible gross-out garbage like THE NEW GUY and THE SWEETEST THING, but what makes this all the more horrible is the fact that it doesn't have to be this way. Mike Myers seems like an intelligent person, and has done some things in his career that I have found genuinely funny. He doesn't *need* to resort to in-your-face urine jokes or fat jokes or penis jokes to sell a movie. And, I wanted to enjoy this thing, despite the fact that I loathed THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME. But, after this, Mike Myers is dead to me. I don't care about CAT IN THE HAT or the Keith Moon biopic. I just want him to disappear.
As well as his comedic creations, Austin Powers and Dr. Evil. In the first movie, Austin was a dolt. He was a backwards-thinking, idiotic hipster, who only cared about sex. That was the big '60s spy movie joke, and it worked in the first one. The truly funny thing in the first movie, though, was Dr. Evil. Having grown up believing that YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE is the best Bond movie ever made, largely because it is so campy and ridiculous, I found Dr. Evil riotously funny. As stupid as that movie is, it's an hilarious mangling of my favorite Bond movie, and I love it for that. I love the way they played around with concept of the archetypal spy movie bad guy, and all the dumb things that spy movie bad guys do.
This movie killed both Austin Powers and Dr. Evil. They simply are not funny anymore. And a big reason for this is that Myers seems to have literally forgotten how to play them. He has forgotten the accents and the mannerisms. In fact, in a flashback scene to Austin's and Evil's boarding school years, the kid playing Austin does it better than Myers himself. Part of me wonders if this is intentional, if Myers is trying to kill this thing off, but I think that would be giving the guy too much credit. The average person on the street, who may only have seen the first movie, could do a better Powers or Evil than Mike Myers now can, and would be infinitely more funny on film than Mike Myers now is. And, it's Mike Myers's *job* to be funny, though he shirks this responsibility and goes for scatalogical humor when he's obviously capable of doing better. It seems as if his real problem is that he's lazy, and for that, I really have to hate the guy.
(And, I have to wonder what he was thinking when he put in those weird blue contacts to play Dr. Evil. In every close-up, he looks like a creepy, bald Jason Isaacs.)
And, speaking of unfunny Mike Myers characters, I'd like to talk about the title villain -- Goldmember. I believe that this character is something that only Mike Myers truly understands. Apart from the obvious penis jokes, this inexplicably Scandinavian character really serves no other purpose than to make you want to vomit as he eats his own dead skin, which is inexplicably flaking off. So far, the POWERS franchise has given us jokes involving the consumption of feces, which is disgusting in its own right, but not far outside of the very lucrative territory tread by movies like DUMB & DUMBER and AMERICAN PIE. But, a character who compulsively consumes his own dead flesh is something I find troubling, and I wonder what's going on inside Myers's head that makes him believe that this is comedy. Likewise, the incessant reliance on the Fred Savage "mole" joke.
But, even more troubling to me is that people like Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg and Kevin Spacey and Gwyneth Paltrow read this script, and signed on for it, because they thought it was "hilarious" and wanted to be a part of it. Granted, Paltrow did SHALLOW HAL, and Cruise and Spielberg find mucous and roly-poly eyeballs funny. And, there's no defending Michael Caine. But, these are Oscar-caliber actors and film-makers, who are supposed to set the bar for the *good* stuff, the stuff we are supposed to take seriously. Yes, the opening was very funny. In fact, I would rather have seen an entire movie with those actors instead of Mike Myers. Parodying the parody is really the only way you can make a one-shot joke like Austin Powers funny, and it ended before it even began.
But, a Dutch guy, with a gold penis, eating his own dead skin? What is truly funny about that? Would you ever see that in a Coen Brothers movie? What about a Wes Anderson/Owen Wilson movie? Even the most raunchy Monty Python stuff was intelligent. So, is it really so difficult to write something that is funny and intelligent at the same time? There is a place in this world for lowbrow humor. William Shakespeare reveled in it. But, there was joy in that revelry. This film is joyless. Myers phones it in, and even his gross-out gags feel desperate. He's now your garden variety comedic bottom-feeder and somebody needs to put a Walther PPK to the temple of this spent franchise and squeeze the trigger.
John Shade Vick (my AICN screen name is "Shade")
Like I said... I’m working on my own review. I liked it a lot more than most of the people we’ve already posted reviews by, and hopefully, I’ll be able to explain why a little later this morning...
"Moriarty" out.
