just make Austin Powers 4 already

You can make the argument that a large part of appeal in the first Austin Powers film (and what made it so great in the first place) was the simple concept of having a man completely out of the loop be revived. He in the process, has to adjust to having 30+ years of change happen in an instant by his timeline. It therefore made for not just some of the best bits, but best plot points as well. That whole charm and element was gone for the second and third films since the first film ended with him more or less “getting it”; even if he went back in time in the next two films, Austin really didn’t need to adjust to that at all.

You can also make the argument that Mike’s best films (e.g. the first Wayne’s World and Austin Powers respectively) clearly had a message to get across (and it wasn’t Mike simply cashing in or trying to be as weird and outrageous as possible). For example, Wayne’s World (at least the first one) wasn’t simply a Saturday Night Live skit turned into a feature length movie, it satirized the music and television industry and mentality of the time.

This is an interesting observation of how The Love Guru could’ve actually been salvageable had Mike been more able to address certain points/themes in a more coherent and intelligent way:
http://forum.earwolf.com/topic/3475-episode-12-%e2%80%94-the-love-guru/page__view__findpost__p__14564

There are actually kernels of really great ideas in here, about cross-cultural validation and race. One of the main characters is a black hockey player, described as “the Tiger Woods of hockey.” So, why does it take a black superstar to validate a sport? Why are these sports/cultures so racially segregated even today? Why does western culture feel the need to commodify Hinduism into Oprah’s Book Club-style bite-sized bits before that culture can be validated? None of these questions are addressed in any coherent or intelligent way, but they could have been, which makes the film’s outrageous un-humor all the more disappointing.*

*Elaboration: I don’t think comedies have to address weighty issues directly, but if those themes are present, they can add to the humor; like the jokes are a relief to the weightiness inherent in those ideas. You know, how Ghostbusters deals with themes of the afterlife or The Hangover deals with themes of regret and guilt. Those movies are good because they know how to make jokes about things that make us uncomfortable