Mike Myers as Guru Pytka in "The Love Guru",
directed by Marco Schnabel. The film opened today across North America.
(Photo: George Kraychyk/Paramount Pictures)
THE POPCORN REEL FILM REVIEW/"The Love
Guru"
With Him All You Need Is Love, The Toronto
Maple Leafs And Plenty Of Mariska Hargitays To Go Round
By
Omar P.L. Moore/June
20, 2008
Mike Myers is back on the big screen, showing his un-costumed human face in a
film for the first time since 2002's "Austin Powers In Goldmember", as Guru
Pitka in Marco Schnabel's "The Love Guru", which opened today across the U.S.
and Mr. Myers' beloved Canada, a country whose Toronto Maple Leafs get almost as
much billing here as Mr. Myers himself. "The Love Guru", while
uproariously funny in bursts, and distastefully ridiculous and offensive
throughout, is essentially a continuation of the "Austin Powers" series, except
with a Far Eastern flavor. The opening scene is funny as are several
numbers that involve Mr. Myers on the sitar or guitar.
Still, Mr. Myers and Graham Gordy wrote this vacuous mess of a film, which
vacillates from a story about a National Hockey League player for the Maple
Leafs team named Darren (Romany Malco from April's "Baby Mama") who attempts to
regain the love of his wife Prudence (Meagan Good of "Waist Deep") with Pitka's
help, to a sub-plot about Guru Pitka and his quest for love. Mr. Myers is
the Guru, who wows his followers with catchy mnemonic phrases ending with
trademarks, phrases that are amusing for a while, then quickly grow cumbersome.
He kicks around the dwarfish Maple Leafs head coach Cherkov (Verne Troyer) --
where have we seen that before? The film also tramples on India's
Bollywood, the largest filmmaking industry in the world, doing the kinds of
things that seem to hark back to the kind of minstrelsy that was prevalent in
television shows and movies caricaturing blacks in the 1950's. "Guru", a
Paramount Pictures release, also relentlessly mocks Buddhism, whose followers
will find little to laugh at here. (Consider whether Mr. Myers would ever
spend an entire film mocking the Jewish faith. "The Love Rabbi"?
That too would be very indigestible.)
Neither Deepak Chopra nor Pikta's sidekick Rajneesh (Manu Narayan) can
counteract the loathsome, insult-laden crassness of the film, which revels in
bodily fluids and projectiles. Worst and most disappointing of all though
is Ben Kingsley, who seems to be going the way of other similarly-aged and
accomplished actors by becoming a parody of himself. Here he is a
cross-eyed Buddhist named Guru Tigginmypudha, and he is just plain awful here.
That's hard to say about Mr. Kingsley, even after his maniacal turn in "War,
Inc.", but sadly, it's true.
That said, the film cheekily if not cleverly takes advantage of two
heavily-discussed live television moments in recent American pop culture: the
comment of hip-hop star Kanye West whom during a live telethon in 2005 to help
those in New Orleans, Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast who were ravaged
by Hurricane Katrina, said that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
Standing right next to Mr. West was a very uncomfortable-looking Mr. Myers,
ramrod straight and sighing deeply. The other moment -- more subtle but in
some ways as blatant, and subliminal by virtue of the casting of the film -- was
the infamous Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake Super Bowl halftime music concert
episode in 2004, a hasty rip by Mr. Timberlake of Ms Jackson's costume, and
hey-presto, a split-fractional second of Ms. Jackson's breast, an ephemeral
exhibit for her yesteryear television show "The Facts Of Life". Ms. Good
has been spirited into the Ms. Jackson role here, if you will, and none other
than Mr. Timberlake himself plays Jacques Grande, a player for the NHL's Los
Angeles Kings, a player who celebrates his well-endowed persona, captivating
Prudence by eliciting a "damn" from her at the sight of the bulge in his brief.
The parade of cameo appearances include "Law And Order" television star Mariska
Hargitay, whose name is used more as a bludgeon by Guru Pitka after its tenth
intonation than as a chant meant as a term of endearment. The cameos in
"The Love Guru" are more tiresome than the obligatory television camera shots of
celebrity row at Madison Square Garden or Staples Center during a National
Basketball Association game featuring the New York Knicks (a team who haven't
won more than 39 regular season games out of a total of 82 in any of the last
seven seasons) or the Los Angeles Lakers respectively (the L.A. contingent just
got their heads handed to them a few nights ago, losing to the Boston Celtics in
the NBA Finals.)
As for the film's principals, although Mr. Myers shows enthusiasm and merriment
in the lead role, in his writing of this film he is woefully substandard.
When Mr. Myers has to resort to gimmicks from past Mike Myers films to get
laughs, you know he (and the audience) is in trouble. Mr. Malco plays a
more subdued version of the Cuba Gooding, Jr. role from "Jerry Maguire", though
far less animated than the Oscar-wining portrayal that Mr. Gooding crafted.
"The Love Guru" is an example of a film that stumbles along, repeatedly spewing
forth tired bathroom humor, juvenile references and preoccupation with male
genitalia that makes one wonder why on earth the almost-universally hated Maple
Leafs owner Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) would choose to fall for a man who makes
penises and testicles out of dough and all manner of other things. It,
like the rest of the film, makes little sense, even as a comedy. But then
again, love sometimes doesn't make sense except to those enraptured in it, which
at the end of the day is what matters most. Be that as it may, Mr.
Schnabel's film is like a tired comedian who has told the same joke a few too
many hundred times during a show, or the comic who thinks that the only way to
get someone in his audience to laugh is to say the f-word or variations of it
over and over and over again. In the film "Malcolm X", Albert Hall's
Baines character famously says to Denzel Washington's jailhouse Malcolm (known
then as Satan in that period of his life) the following: "a man curses because
he doesn't have the words to say."
"The Love Guru" crashes early on because it doesn't have the wit and the comic
ingenuity to elevate itself beyond the men's room.
"The Love Guru" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America
for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some comic violence and drug
references. The film's duration is one hour and 36 minutes.
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. 2008. All Rights
Reserved.
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