Ya babeee! I'm one tired franchise!

Growing more tiresome by each iteration, "Goldmember" can be summed up by one line: "Top Secret was better". Need to know more? Okay.

It's really, really sad when the only thing distinguishing this from that Abrahams and Zucker Bros. spy parody film is a lack of story. Yeah, Austin Powers has even less of a story that "Top Secret". Sure, Goldmember has better cameos (half of which come in the first two minutes), 200X the budget and an army of makeup technicians transforming Mike Myers into four different characters. Measured laugh for laugh, gag for gag, however, "Top Secret" comes on top.

Goldmember has nicer girls. Beyonce Knowles gets to thrust her midriff at the camera nicely and there are cuties throwing themselves at Austin everywhere after which we can hear that stupid line: "oh behave". The part with the Japanese twins with the amusing names was indistinguishable from the "Roger, roger" skit in "Airplane" except for the tits.

Mike Myers may be responsible for resurrecting 60s and 70s nostalgia on film for the masses, but Goldmember might be responsible for killing it too. I love Afros and a pimp suits and glitter. But after this assault on the mind I want to officially call retro-time travel dead. Making fun of the dresses and the music isn't entertaining any more.

All would be forgiven if Goldmember was actually funny enough. It isn't. The value of a film like "Top Secret" is that it throws so many gags at you at such a high rate that you can forgive the bad jokes because you don't even have time to consider them. In Goldmember the bad jokes are extended. And some of them are even repeated so if you hated them the first time, you can shut your eyes and nod away the next time they roll around.

What is truly infuriating about Goldmember is the extent to which it relies on fondness of the first two movies. So many of the gags reference the earlier movies that anyone who can't remember them will be shrugging or laughing because .. well.. everyone else seems to be having a good time. Yuck. Solid yuck.

What we have between all the spy movie references, bad SNL-level gags and Mike Myers ham is a lot of groaning potty humour. We have farting, crapping, peeing, wanking, crotch grabbing, kneeing, phallic references, booby references, and the old tired characters from the first two movies. The addition of Michael Caine makes for a couple good scenes as part of the 60s icon-stealing theme. Maybe in Austin Powers 4 he'll be relegated to the same position as Michael York. Better yet, he should hope to be killed off screen.

In theatres