WHAT do you remember most from the second Austin Powers movie? Liz Hurley's instant vanishing act, or Mini Me, or the fat ginger Scotsman getting jiggy with Heather Graham? Or more likely, Madonna's spin-off hit single, Beautiful Stranger, groovier by far than the satirical movie itself.

This time the movie rules, right from the Hollywood glitterati-encrusted opening sequence featuring the likes of Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg and Britney Spears on the cameo catwalk.

Sixties-digging international man of mystery Austin Powers (Mike Myers) time-travels back to 1975 and the disco world of Studio 69 on a mission to rescue his father, Nigel Powers (Michael Caine, contentedly sending up every Caine clich, thick glasses, nasal Cockney accent, cool demeanour and all).

With Austin is his new assistant, glamorous Seventies vixen Foxxy Cleopatra (Destiny's Child singer Beyonc Knowles, paying her tribute to Pam Grier in the blaxploitation movies, to hot effect).

Powers senior has fallen into the clutches of Austin's nemesis, Dr Evil (Myers part two) and his new despotic ally in bugging the sensible world, Goldmember (Myers part three), a roller-skating, skin-flaking, night-clubbing Dutch dude stuck in 1975 with a certain section of his anatomy in a state of exactly what it says on the label.

All the old characters are back: Michael York as Austin's extra-smooth Basil Exposition; Verne Troyer's Mini Me in a baby carrier; Robert Wagner's Number 2, Dr Evil's stoical aid; Seth Green as Dr Evil's attention-seeking elder son (Hamlet meets Bill And Ted), and Myers, yet again, as that grotesque, ghastly Scotsman with the wind problem and a new Sumo fixation.

And yes, he still has the wind problem, because Myers can't resist any opportunity for a rude and lewd joke, celebrating bodily functions and fluids with the glee of a child and all the good taste of a skunk.

Sometimes the sight gags work and sometimes they miss but that has always been the case in the Powers movies. Goldmember fires more hits than blanks, and under Jay Roach's athletic direction the next hit is never too far away, be it a prison parody of Jay-Z's rapping version of It's A Hard Knock Life or a stand-out silhouette sequence.

Goldmember is another post-modern Bond spoof from Myers, as if played by Peter Sellers impersonating Peter Wyngarde with script revision by Viz, and it's in the groove, not stuck in a rut.

Charles Hutchinson

Updated: 09:38 Friday, July 26, 2002