The Love Guru: Movie Review
Mike Myers’ The Love Guru is positively awful.
As a movie-goer I would consider this enough of a review that I would be able to move on to bigger things, since it’s entirely true, but I also hold myself to higher standards of writing than that, so I will continue.
Now as simple enough as it is to call The Love Guru awful, it still doesn’t explain the most important part of the review: WHY is The Love Guru awful? In order to understand that we must first understand the film itself. The movie stars Mike Myers as Maurice Pitka, currently the number two self-help guru in the world behind REAL self-help guru, Deepak Chopra. Dreaming of appearing on Oprah, Pitka takes on the biggest job of his career, being tasked with rekindling the romance between Toronto Maple Leafs player Darren Roanoke, (Romany Malco) and his estranged wife, (Meagan Good) currently necking with rival hockey player Jaques “Le Coq” Grande. (Justin Timberlake) As this happens he finds himself falling for the Maple Leafs team owner, Jane Bullard. (Jessica Alba)
The most obvious flaw in the movie is that simply put: It’s not funny. The only moment the film ever got so much as a “Heh” out of me was when I first saw the trailer, there was a one-off gag with Pitka atop what appeared to be a magic carpet of sorts, backing up, and making that distinctive “Beep beep beep” noise that you hear when a truck backs up. That was pretty much it.
The humor from much of the rest of the film derives from countless immature gross-out gags, ranging from disciples of Pitka’s mentor, Guru Tugginmypudha, (Portrayed by Ben Kingsley. Yes. Ben Kingsley who won a Best Actor Oscar in the film Gandhi. THAT Ben Kingsley.) beating each other senselessly with piss-stain mops, and more than one elephant dung joke. (Apparently one just isn’t enough for Myers.)
There’s also heavy reliance of pop-culture references as well. If you’re a fan of Family Guy, which pretty much throws them at you in an endless stream, often forgetting to include a joke in the process, then you may get a few chuckles out of this. I on the other hand, get no such pleasure out of jokes that rely entirely on the viewer’s knowledge of pop culture, and as such couldn’t laugh at Mike Myers playing “9 to 5” on a sitar, or incessantly telling people “Mariska Hargitay” as if it MEANT something. (More like as if it was poised to be the next big Myers film catchphrase. Save for the Shrek series, pretty much all of them have one.)
What was somewhat baffling is the pop-culture referencing went as far back as Myers’ own films. At one point Pitka finds “Bohemian Rhapsody” playing on a radio, turns to the camera as if to give a winking nod, then changes the station. An obvious reference to Wayne’s World, but still not that funny. But when his previous films aren’t being alluded to, jokes are outright copied and pasted from other ones. (I lost count how many midget jokes were made in the film, at the expense of Verne Troyer as Coach Cherkov, that were pretty much cookie cutter copies of jokes played on Verne Troyer as Mini-Me’s expense in Austin Powers. I wasn’t paying attention completely, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if I found that he was re-hashing jokes from even So I Married An Axe Murderer.)
The film also failed to connect the viewer to the plot and characters, and genuinely believe in the action that’s taking place. Walking in to the film for me, it was the impossibility in believing that Jessica Alba and Justin Timberlake could be called actors, but later it expanded into the impossibility that anyone could identify with Myers’ Pitka character, (He regularly comes off as rather douchebaggy with every joke made at the expense of another character without any sort of charm.) or even see any sort of scrap of wisdom in him. (With all the ridiculously unwitty musings and puns that Pitka makes, it really seems only the characters in the film are laughing at/with him, while the audience is left with a whisper quiet theater.)
Oh yeah, speaking of puns, if you’re not a fan of puns bring some asprin. There are some truly awful puns and unfunny entendres rampant throughout the film. (Present in the characters of Guru Tugginmypudha, Guru Sachabigknoba, Coach Cherkov, Jaques “Le Coq” Grande, and the not even SLIGHTLY subtle Dick Pants.) I’m beginning to think that any complaints by Hindu activist groups about the film being insensitive to Hindus aren’t quite unfounded, considering that Myers would actually attempt to pass off Tugginmypudha or Sachabigknoba as legit Hindu names.
The film hasn’t done well so far, especially considering all the advertising green that’s been dumped into it, so thankfully there doesn’t seem to be a chance for a sequel. Personally I’m wondering what will become of Myers, who hasn’t done any movies since 2003’s abberation, The Cat In The Hat. (Not counting the Shrek films.) It would make no difference to me if Myers just stopped making films altogether after this one. At least then we’d be spared any more of what Myers thinks is funny, which I’ve pretty much got down to a formula now: Canada, Poop, Midgets, Pop-Culture, Ethnic Stereotypes, and Puns. Which is pretty much all you can expect out of The Love Guru. (HUMOR on the other hand…)
- Mr. Vorhias
