Also this issue: Wriggle Room Tadpole squirms, but it doesn’t have legs. -Cindy Fuchs Falling on Deaf Ears Read My Lips undermines the thriller, but doesn’t fill in the hole. -Sam Adams Screen Picks repertory film Showtimes

July 25-31, 2002

movie shorts

new

AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER

After the third time in a row, it feels like Austin Powers could use a Viagra or two. Catapulted this time to 1975, Austin (Mike Myers, as snaggletoothed as ever) hooks up with the golden-’froed Foxy Cleopatra (Beyoncé Knowles) to fight Evil -- Dr. Evil, that is, along with new nemesis Goldmember, a lisping Dutchman with eczema and a 24-carat dingly-dangly (the original having been lost in an “unfortunate smelting accident,” a phrase that grows no funnier each of the many times it’s repeated). With each installment, the series has grown less focused, which means this time out Myers and director Jay Roach find themselves scraping the bottom of the pop-culture barrel, subsisting on lame Britney Spears jokes and references to movies that, while hardly old, are still past their referential prime (Mission: Impossible, Hannibal, The Matrix, possibly even a dash of Midnight Express). In particular, the movie founders on Knowles’ vacant performance. Though she’s named for blaxploitation heroes, she’s not fit to fill one of Pam Grier’s D-cups. --Sam Adams (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Bryn Mawr; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview )

THE COUNTRY BEARS

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Disney’s Country Bears...

They look like big scary dogs.

Bears? If you say so.

(AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Bala; UA Grant; UA Riverview)