Review: The Love Guru
Zero stars
Mike Myers, Ben Kingsley, Jessica Alba, Verne Troyer, Romany Malco, Justin Timberlake, Meagan Good. Written by Mike Myers and Graham Gordy. Directed by Marco Schnabel. Rated PG-13. 88 minutes. Paramount Pictures.
The Happening is in the clear. Another week, another bad picture and the mantle of the year’s worst film has been reclaimed.
Hindu groups up in arms about the stink bomb The Love Guru can rest assured that the equal opportunity stupidity on display in this Mike Myers vanity fiasco is offensive to anyone, of any culture, with any taste, period.
A vulgar, cheap, adolescent, wink-wink “satire” about a wildly popular flamboyant, celebrity guru recruited to mend the flailing career of a Canadian pro hockey stud while falling in love with the brittle team owner, The Love Guru is one sorry excuse for comedy and a misfire for otherwise talented Myers and cast.
Pitka (Myers), an American kid abandoned at an Indian ashram and raised under the tutelage of gurus, led by Guru Tugginmypudha (Ben Kingsley), returns to America as an adult, seeking fame and fortune as a spiritual advisor to the stars. Fabulously successful, he frolics about his extravagant temple on a motorized carpet (the kind that beeps when it backs up, teheh).
Clad in a chastity belt and gaudy guru-chic, longing to get on Oprah and second only to Deepak Chopra, he specializes in acronym self-help like B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth) or B.L.O.W.M.E. (yes, you read that right), authoring books with titles like “Stop Hitting Yourself. Why Are You Still Hitting Yourself?” The film marches out endless word games and book titles, none of which comes close to a laugh though Myers mugs and milks each with ear-to-ear grin, fake accent and beard, betrayed by a film editor with no clue how to trim a reaction shot to get a laugh. Not that any cutting could make debacle funny.
Guru Pitka also hosts celebrity love-ins at his ornate abode, an excuse to parade out flat celeb cameos from Jessica Simpson, Val Kilmer and Mariska Hargitay, whose name is repeated incessantly in each scene as a mantra of welcome and goodwill. It wasn’t funny once, and it isn’t funny when the actress shows up, and it isn’t funny on the hundredth time either.
Summoned by beleaguered hockey team owner Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba, unlucky in love if you can believe that one), Guru Pitka must help Toronto Maple Leafs star Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) get his mojo back in time for The Stanley Cup, after wife Prudence (Meagan Good) takes up with rival LA Kings player Jacques Grande (a flamboyant Justin Timberlake matching Myers in broadness). Roanoke’s game plummets, but with the help of Guru Pitka’s principles, he must make peace with his tough mom (Telma Hopkins) before he can make good for his dwarfed coach (Verne Troyer, the butt of many “midget” jokes).
Of course, Guru Pitka and Jane fall for each other, but not before parading mating elephants onto the ice in a bizarrely conceived comic anti-climax that makes one wonder who smoked what during the screenplay draft?
So what constitutes comedy here? The “jokes” are primarily groin references in every scene, followed by urination, followed by boogers, followed by references to nut sacks, followed by belches, followed by two elephants inexplicably humping on ice in the middle of the big game while a dwarf is electrocuted and shot into the goal—you get the idea. And did I mention the characters named Guru Satchabigknoba (one more time!) and Dick Pants?
The gifted and surely embarassed Ben Kingsley remains cross-eyed throughout the entire picture, hitting a career low in a scene where he burps, urinates in an urn and then picks his nose, encouraging a game of mop-fighting with his waste. After seeing his stellar work in the upcoming The Wackness, as a New York shrink coming apart on pills and a failed marriage in the hands of sensitive director Jonathan Levine, Kingsley ought to file a suit against director Marco Schnabel for…I don’t know, but there has to be something.
Without a single scene in the picture that works, The Love Guru is the most tedious 88 minutes imaginable, managing to take down its entire cast, making fools of otherwise decent actors. Even Deepak Chopra shows up in the final scene, obviously unaware of how this garbage would play. And Stephen Colbert follows suit with the exagerrated tone as addicted sportscaster falling off the wagon, on air. Uh-huh.
There is also an attempt to affectionately skewer Bollywood with a few opening and closing musical numbers, and the film’s only tolerable 15 seconds—an imaginary moment where the guru first meets Jane and fantasizes meeting her in a field—is over in a flash. I did, however, smile at the dubbing of Alba’s singing voice in the finale.
When the best thing you can say about a picture is that an otherwise bad actress like Alba looks beautiful when she appears every fifteen minutes or so, you better call it a day—or a direct-to-video, at least.
To poach the film’s potty-mouthed vernacular, “Nuts in a sling, this picture stinks.”
Stay away.
- Lee Shoquist
Lee@atnzone.com
2 Responses to “Review: The Love Guru”
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i cant believe ben kingsely was in this!
I watched this last night and laughed my ass off. Weird.