Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
A fable so simple, so pure, it feels as if it has existed for hundreds of years, like a brilliant shard of sea glass rendered smooth and elegant through generations of retelling.

Name : Eric Kohn / Alias : indieWIRE
This is a quiet little masterpiece of images, each one rich with meaning, that collectively speak to a universal process.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Like The Red Turtle's shipwrecked protagonist, you have to simply stop fighting the current and go with the flow.

Name : Jeff Strickler / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The third installment in the series of super-spy spoofs, it's handcuffed by the ever-increasing load of baggage it carries.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
An impressively disciplined, occasionally transporting debut feature from globe-trotting American helmer Brian Perkins.

Name : Lisa Schwarzbaum / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Mike Myers and Austin Powers may stick to their old Beatle boots, but they've both come a long way, luvvy.

Name : Charles Taylor / Alias : Salon.com
Structurally and formally, Goldmember is a mess. What saves it is that Myers possesses in spades the thing that's crucial for comedy: an absolute lack of embarrassment and the willingness to go with his gut instinct.

Name : Steven Rosen / Alias : Denver Post
With so many impersonations to keep track off, director Jay Roach winds up moving between Myers and Myers so often that the editing feels like a crude cut-and-paste job.

Name : Mark Olsen / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Myers' puppy-dog tenacity to that cast-iron tenet of low comedy, disarming and even somewhat charming in the first film, now has an air of careerist desperation about it.

Name : Ken Jaworowski / Alias : New York Times
Approaching the story for the traditional trappings - narrative, action, even logic - is to ensure disappointment. But look to it for beauty and lyricism, and you may find a deeper satisfaction.

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
At its most absorbing, Lasseter's story plays like an Aussie Treasure of the Sierra Madre, in which the main subject is a bit of a cypher whose true nature proves to be as difficult to pinpoint as that elusive gold.

Name : Roger Ebert / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The movie is a little tired; maybe the original inspiration has run its course.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
When a movie is as down-and-out funny as Austin Powers in Goldmember, it's easy to overlook the missed opportunities and fizzled jokes littering the barrage of hilarity.

Name : Craig D. Lindsey / Alias : Village Voice
The movie meanders (Perkins seems as distractingly lost as Frost), but it can stir real sympathy.

Name : Eric Harrison / Alias : Houston Chronicle
Austin Powers in Goldmember is a cinematic car wreck, a catastrophic collision of tastelessness and gall that nevertheless will leave fans clamoring for another ride.

Name : Stephen Hunter / Alias : Washington Post
The level of inventiveness remains high.

Name : Bill Muller / Alias : Arizona Republic
The result plays like a series of skits, but the gags are so funny that it works anyway.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Myers' idea of a movie turns out to be similar to Ed Sullivan's idea for a variety show: Toss in a little bit of everything and hope for the best.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : Slate
It's an ode to indecent joy.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Ebert & Roeper
I think this is the funniest of the three movies and I liked the first two.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Not much else in this third Austin Powers sequel is new or memorable.

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Toronto Star
This is a movie that's trying in too many senses of the word.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Qualities that were once amusing are becoming irritating.

Name : Roger Moore / Alias : Orlando Sentinel
The whole enterprise collapses from exhaustion about two-thirds of the way through. Still, a staggering number of the gags that Myers and Co. fling against the screen stick.

Name : Connie Ogle / Alias : Miami Herald
The Austin Powers films have never, ever been anything approaching high-brow, but the uneven Goldmember seems to take a big step toward the extremely juvenile, with more scatological and fewer sex jokes.

Name : Dennis Lim / Alias : Village Voice
Star/writer Mike Myers and director Jay Roach struggle visibly with exhausted possibilities and diminishing returns.

Name : Tom Maurstad / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Watching Austin Powers in Goldmember is like binging on cotton candy. It's sweet and fluffy at the time, but it may leave you feeling a little sticky and unsatisfied.

Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
Even if the gag-to-wince ratio isn't high, there are enough punchlines thrown here to make a sphinx smirk.

Name : Carrie Rickey / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Despite the firecracker energy of Beyonce Knowles, on hand as Foxxy Cleopatra, a tribute to bootylicious blaxploitation babe Pam Grier, the film is almost a complete fizzle.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Goldmember delivers.

Name : Clarence Tsui / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Golden Kingdom's theological backbone is fleshed out by a warm and endearing portrayal of its characters' childhood innocence.

Name : Paul Clinton (CNN.com) / Alias : CNN.com
It's amusing, but you may find that you're over it.

Name : Mike Clark / Alias : USA Today
The Powers team has fashioned a comedy with more laughs than many, no question. But this time there's some mold on the gold.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Variety
The laughs are here, to be sure, although even some of the best of them are retreads and the Swinging '60s recycling act is now feeling a bit past its zeitgeist prime.

Name : Neil Young / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Sometimes all a documentary needs is one strong, charismatic personality to keep things watchable: Garnet's Gold boasts two in the form of the middle-aged eponymous protagonist and his feisty octogenarian mother.

Name : Susan Stark / Alias : Detroit News
Austin and Dr. Evil remain the most inventively detailed characters played by the franchise's star, guiding light and principal beneficiary. He's cheerful and energetic as ever.

Name : Kirk Honeycutt / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The misses outweigh the hits by a wide margin.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Newsday
Goldmember is funny enough to justify the embarrassment of bringing a barf bag to the moviehouse.

Name : Terry Lawson / Alias : Detroit Free Press
The '60s satire that made the first movie such a hip trip is now just so much polka-dotted wallpaper; the jokes are now almost exclusively confined to orifices and excretions.

Name : Jonathan Foreman / Alias : New York Post
Uneven, self-conscious but often hilarious spoof.

Name : Eleanor Ringel Gillespie / Alias : Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The reason this picture works better than its predecessors is that Myers is no longer simply spoofing the mini-mod-madness of '60s spy movies.

Name : Glenn Lovell / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
A 14-carat stinker, delivered with little sense of fun and less inspiration.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
All praise to Michael Caine, who plays Austin's studly spy daddy, Nigel, and to Beyonce Knowles, who turns on Pam Grier sass as agent Foxxy Cleopatra. But hit-and-miss skits trying to pass as a coherent time-traveling plot reduce them to bystanders.

Name : Desson Thomson / Alias : Washington Post
One-ups the Austin Powers sequel that came before it.

Name : Michael Wilmington / Alias : Chicago Tribune
A shapeless, derivative-but-funny show.

Name : Andrew Sarris / Alias : New York Observer
It's all amateur-night vaudeville and movies within movies that degenerate into total inanity.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
The most consistently funny of the Austin Powers films.