But let me put it another way: "Whoooooo! Whoa! Yow!" "Austin Powers in Goldmember" is the kind of stinkbomb that ought to clear a room.

Nah. No such luck. Instead, it's opening on more than 3,000 screens in North America, and whatever goodwill the previous two installments earned will gobble up grosses for at least a weekend. I saw the film with a packed audience that seemed as much shocked as titillated by the relentless filth this PG-13-rated AOL Time Warner corporate monstrosity flings from the screen. After suffering through this commodity, I'm reluctant to even to flip through my notes and revisit the experience. It'd sort of be like picking through your stool for evidence of your last meal. Oh wait, that's one of the almost-funny jokes in this ragtag assembly of grotesque scatology, homosexual panic and contempt for the audience: Mike Myers' Fat Bastard character looking back in the bowl before a flush and roaring in that far-from-witty Scots burr, "What? Ah didn't have any corn!"

Did Mel Brooks know what he was doing when he let those cowboys rip around the campfire in "Blazing Saddles"? As entertaining as dog doo on the bottom of a shoe, "Austin Powers in Goldmember" is the new gold standard in corporate lack of taste. Where John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" garnered its underground, head-trip, post-hippie notoriety thirty years ago with its climactic spectacle—watching Divine scarf up poodle shit—the third (and one hopes, last) in the Austin Powers series is from start-to-finish obsessed with feces and urine. Yet, for a film that is not only obsessed with bodily functions, but comprised primarily of them, corporations have lined up for a little taste of the coprophagy: note Pepsi, Starbucks, Taco Bell, Apple, Bacardi, Aquafina and Subway sandwiches among those whose products are on glorious display.

I'm still reeling at the cynicism. With even less of a plot than the effervescently harmless "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," "Austin Powers in Goldmember" seems to think that references are jokes, as in "I'm a sexy beast, aren't I?" Whatever one thinks of "Sexy Beast," at least its characters behave like representations of humans, rather than the inner self-loathing and loathing for the audience of a very successful comedy star. (This is a film that tries to garner comedy from a large mole on a man's face, though it is produced, co-written by and starring a man with moles on his face. I don't even know where to begin with that one.) Sitting in the dark watching "Goldmember" is like seeing wretched improv comedy, without the saving grace of most of the audience being drunk. More? The new character of Goldmember isn't funny, eats his own scabs, and spends a lot of time saying lame lines that are the comic equivalent of "But I'm from Holland!"

Myers, having burned through all the jokes about his own ungainliness and plain features, now turns to homosexual panic. My attention wandered, looked around the packed house. Others—and I don't mean critics—were looking around as well, as if embarrassed to look at the screen, or to be seen with faces upturned in the reflected light of the screen. C'mon, it's not satire; it's just gross. The vulgarity is no longer playful. It's like Myers is rubbing your nose in all the money he's making. I have nothing against raunch. There are crass movies I don't mind. I admire much of the attitude behind movies by the Farrelly brothers. They don't seem to hate their characters or the audience. Todd Solondz ("Happiness," "Storytelling") seems like one sour little guy, but his films at least announce themselves as being violations of your trust as a moviegoer, rather than trying to sneak in under the wire as an "innocuous" comedy of innuendo for the whole family to share. While Myers and Co. may think they're on the wavelength of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, at least their notions of wit rose higher than the display of shit skids.

One joke made me laugh out loud: Seth Green runs from a room in a huff and a pout and dad Dr. Evil announces, "I'd like to point out that no one else in my gene pool runs like a girl." Am I being too harsh? For those who obsess on the street over the relative penis size of other men every other waking moment, here's your movie. And if you're interested in autofellatio, well-hung little people, the scent of farts, the sound of farts, bestiality, testicle tenderness, emasculation, scab-eating and seeing Britney Spears blown to bits, truck on down and throw $10 more on the bonfire. (Tuesday's Drudge Report rumored that George W. Bush has said he can't wait to see it again.) Can't we deport Myers back to Canada? At the semi-roaring audience I saw this PG-13 aberration with, the man next to me kept repeating, in admiration, "This is the stupidest shit I ever saw!"

True, baby, true!

"Austin Powers in Goldmember" is now preying.

Also by Ray Pride

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