THE LOVE GURU

Paramount Pictures/ Spyglass Entertainment
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: C-
Directed by: Marco Schnabel
Written By: Mike Myers, Graham Gordy
Cast: Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Romany Malco, Verne Troyer, Meagan Good, Manu Narayan, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Jim Gaffigan, Ben Kingsley
Screened at: AMC Lincoln Square, NYC, 6/17/08
Opens: June 20, 2008

Take a look at this week’s New York Times best sellers and you’ll find titles like “The Secret,” “Quantum Wellness,” “Just Who Will You Be?” “Letters to a Young Sister,” “The Power of Now,” and “The Five Love Languages.” One would think that by now every bit of advice to readers would be exhausted. What’s new under the sun? Vulnerable that we are, we gobble up the latest counsel from “Oprah” magazine and sex advice from “Cosmopolitan” as though every new issue does more than reinvent the wheel. Does any of this counseling help? Who knows? Sometimes what seems to be computer-driven print in these books and magazines, filled as they are with gobbledegook like “be here now” is ripe for satire. That’s where German-born director Marco Schnabel comes in with his debut feature. “The Love Guru” is one such attempt to parody the self-help industry, and in addition is a spoof not of gurus in general—contrary to what some Hindus protesting the movie think—but of people who set themselves up to be gurus, or teachers, but who are phonies interested only in women, fancy cars, and real estate in Monte Carlo, Paris, and New York. Now, if it’s questionable that self-help books really assist anyone to master the difficulties of living, there’s no question that “The Love Guru” is a dud—maybe not so for audience members who are easy to please, who think that summer movies should be exempted from critical appraisal. The film does not work as satire because Mike Myers, who is in virtually every frame, laughing at his own jokes (well, somebody has to laugh at what passes for humor), knocks out wisecracks that are persistently redundant, stupid and coarse. While there’s nothing wrong with vulgarity, if you want to have successful sight gags that are down-and-dirty, make sure that Judd Apatow is connected with your production. Clearly Mr. Apatow is not around.

Mike Myers got the idea for the movie via his spiritual quest taken after the loss of his father. He made the rounds of gurus and ashrams, as though nothing in Western psychology and philosophy could match the wisdom of the East, ultimately deciding that the way to emerge from grief is through comedy. Too bad he did not inject much of that into his latest movie.

Flashing back to his days in guru school headed by the cross-eyed Guru Tugginmypuddha (Ben Kingsley—featured in “Gandhi” and “Schindler’s List” but on a roll with roles that are far beneath him), we see the man who becomes Guru Pitka (Mike Myers) ascends to second place among American gurus, bested by Deepak Chopra. Pitka knows that to get on the Oprah show, his crowning ambition, he must save the marriage of Toronto Maple Leaf’s hockey star, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), who has been letting the team and its owner, Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), down because his wife Prudence Roanoke (Meagan Good) has split and is dating rival L.A. Kings’ goalie, Jacque “Le Coq” Grande (Justin Timberlake). That’s what serves as plot in a film that’s really a series of Saturday Night Live sketches that comes across as almost a Mike Myers vanity project.

The gags, verbal and sight, are anything but witty unless you’re amused by sophomoric acronyms like Pitka’s advice to Be Loving & Open With My Emotions (get it?); with bathroom-humor names like Ben Kingsley’s Tugginmypudha, and the name of Pitka Indian fishing village, Harenmahkeester. The sight yuks including two elephants coupling in the hockey stadium, a fight between two aspiring guru teams in India with mops soaked with urine, and a chastity belt that Tugginmypuddha attached to twelve-year-old Pitka which he must wear until he learns to love himself (like Mike Myers, obviously). The midget gags feature, of course, Verne Troyer as Toronto Maple Leaf’s Coach Cherkov (get it?), but admittedly there’s a cute scene of Cherkov’s office which is custom made for him and which leads people of average height to find their heads plunging through the ceiling.

Stephen Colbert does some amusing stuff as Jay Kell,one of the two announcers, who together with his partner Trent Lueders,(Jim Gaffigan) try with moderate success to replicate the far better camaraderie between the broadcasters in Christopher Guest”s “Best in Show.” One can say about this movie is that it’s slightly better than “Austin Powers as Goldmember.” Movie buffs know this is damning “The Love Guru” with faint praise.

Rated PG-13. 88 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online