The Love Guru (Paramount Pictures)
Silliness Combined With Crudity Equals Flopola
Mike Myers has shown he can be funny in such movies as Austin Powers and Shrek. In truth however each additional Austin Powers adventure got sillier and each Shrek sequel got less entertaining. His latest venture The Love Guru is a mess from the very start. The trailers for this film looked horrible and this is a case of advertising not lying. It looked bad and it is bad.
Myers plays the Guru Pitka. He is an American raised in India and he studied at the feet of the master guru in his village (Ben Kingsley). His competitor has always been Deepak Chopra. Chopra is the number one guru while Pitka is number two, and it is eating him up.
His agent (John Oliver) comes up with a solution. He gets Pitka a job with the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) is the owner of the team and she is having trouble with her star player Darren Roanoke (Rominy Malco). He has split from his wife (Meagan Good) and gotten involved with LA player Jacques Grande (Justin Timberlake). Guru Pitka needs to help Darren solve his love problems so he can lead the team to victory.
The coach of the team is played by Verne Troyer, who played Mini Me in the Austin Powers movies. His casting leads to all manner of size jokes which are embarrassing to see and hear. But those jokes are mild compared with the ones directed at Timberlakes character. You will have to watch the movie to get the details.
Pitka is somewhat entertaining at first but he gets old fast, as does the movie. It seems Myers decided that if he didnt have a real plot and he didnt have good characters, the remedy would be one crude joke after another. So out comes his inventive mind to see how many ways he can offend just about everyone from Hindus to midgets to women.
It is embarrassing to see Alba and Timberlake be the brunt of so many crude jokes. These are two people who actually have talent and why they are stuck in a movie like this one is a mystery. Myers wrote the mess so he only has himself to blame.
The film is rated PG-13 (and that is a liberal rating) for profanity and crude humor.
As I said Myers is a talented man. Lets hope he can steer his talents into something more enjoyable for audiences. He doesnt have to create G rated comedies but one that has some valid plot points and enjoyable characters would be a nice change. Plus he can bring back his Saturday Night Live type of comedy. It wasnt squeaky clean but it wasnt offensive.
Meanwhile The Love Guru should sink like a stone. Possibly so few people will see it that it wont be a blemish on Myers career.
I scored The Love Guru a Marishka Hargitay 3 out of 10.
