Dead as a doornail, baby!!! Or at least I wish it was. After years of rumors, HitFix is reporting that Mike Meyers is all but a done deal to return as the oversexed, cliche spouting 1960s spoof spy hero, Austin Powers, in a fourth film in the franchise that ran out of steam way back in 1999 with The Spy Who Shagged Me
. Unfortunately nobody realized that the one-joke series had stopped being funny or cool, and so a misguided Beyonce-starring installment was released in 2002. Goldmember
went on to earn $300M, and the ire of an entire nation. So what brings Meyers back now after nearly a decade of the snaggle toothed character being on the shelf? Likely desperation, as Meyers hasn't had a hit starring vehicle without Austin Powers, unless you count the Shrek
films(which I don't) or his curious cameo in Inglourious Basterds
(again, I don't). The last film which actually saw Meyers as the front man was 2008's The Love Guru
, which I think took in more Razzie Awards than it did actual ticket sales. What will the plot be? Does it matter? Meyers is going to have to put in some serious overtime to make this concept fresh again, and personally I don't think it's possible. I wasn't a big fan of any of the Austin Powers films over than the first one, back when his fish out of water antics were still pretty novel. I'll be curious to see if Jay Roach, who directed all three flicks, will return, or if he's happy having moved on to bigger and probably better things like HBO's upcoming political drama, Game Change.
