Austin Powers In Goldmember

Austin Powers In Goldmember serves up the same jokes from the first two films. The shadow games from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me between Austin (Mike Myers) and Heather Graham's Felicity Shagwell, in which their innocent actions appear indisputably rude when played out against tent canvas, are re-enacted here with Austin and Mini-Me (Vern Troyer). Dr Evil's Number Two (Robert Wagner) once again comes up with a legitimate way of making a stack of money, only to be shouted down by Evil's desire for world domination. And Austin's catchphrases ("Yeah, baby!" etc.) are all rolled out to punctuate the action. Mike Myers certainly knows the comic hit of repetition.

But if you anticipate Goldmember being a tired re-run of past glories, think again. Myers' gags get funnier the more you hear them. If comedy is the subversion of expectation, then Austin Powers confounds you by audaciously delivering exactly what you've seen before. Even the raddled Ozzy Osbourne recognises this. In one of Goldmember's many cameos, the Osbournes bemoan the lack of new material, the gag being that only someone as out of it as Ozzy would fail to recognise how the same joke, repeated over and over again, can - in the right hands - snowball into genius.

The main surprise is that the third Austin Powers film caps a trilogy. Mike Myers reveals what no one suspected all along: that his parody of 1960s spy movies (ransacking Our Man Flint, cheesy Bond, Modesty Blaise and - weirdly - Blow-Up) were infact leading up to a Return Of The Jedi-style showdown.

These revelations revolve around Austin's dad, Nigel (a twinkling Michael Caine), with one foot in his Harry Palmer spy roles from the 1960s, and the other in a dry martini. He's been captured by Dr Evil's new buddy, the Dutch mastercriminal Goldmember (also Myers), a rancid free love exile who has imprisoned Nigel Powers in his 1970s roller-disco, Studio 69. Austin has to travel back through time to save him, pimping it up in the 70s, where he's aided by the ferociously alluring Foxxy Cleopatra (Destiny's Chld pop star Beyonce Knowles), a tribute to those blaxpolitation heroines Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones.

Myers is spot-on with his black pop culture mickey-takes. The best gag in Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery was Dr Evil's faux gangsta patter just before jumping the bones of Frau Farbissina (Mindy Sterling) - pouring a splash of booze on to the ground and declaring "this one is for my homies" (not to mention his "talk to the hand" turn on 'The Jerry Springer Show'). In Goldmember, he and the ever-wonderful Mini-Me do a whole rap number while incarcerated, proving that while Austin ransacks 1960s England for gags (is there an Englishman alive who hasn't heard that one about a large penis resembling a baby's arm holding an apple?), Dr Evil laps up more contemporary mores for his laughs.

Everything Dr Evil does is funny, which sometimes shows up the failures of Myers' other characters. The return of the gross-out humour of Fat Bastard is unwelcome, especially when wedded to a Hollywood in-joke about wire fights. And Goldmember's Dutch accent is well off-beam to European ears, which is a shame because, you know, the earnest liberalism of the Dutch is a rich seam of humour...