30th
Phil Bacharach Review: The Love Guru
(Oklahoma Gazette, June 25, 2008)
A checklist for lowest-common-denominator comedy:
Characters with naughty-sounding names that would elicit smirks in a seventh-grade classroom? Check. Pop-culture references sure to be dated long before the movie even appears on cable? Check. Mean-spirited routines ridiculing dwarfs, obese people and various non-Americans? Check. Lame jokes involving farts, penises, elephant dung, urine-soaked mops, penises, nose hairs in beverages and even more penises? Check, check, check.
“The Love Guru” is all that and less. Its movie posters should bear a surgeon general’s warning that prolonged exposure to this film can cause dizziness, drooling and incontinence. Then again, all that would be grand fodder for a “Love Guru” sequel (shudder).
The movie attempts to launch a new franchise character for the once-gifted Mike Myers, but the comic actor is a long, long way from the halcyon days of Wayne Campbell and Austin Powers. His Guru Pitka, a spiritual guide enveloped in flowing robes and Myers’ signature smugness, is not so much a fully developed character as he is a collection of tired shtick. Pitka is Myers doing his “Cat in the Hat” bit for the self-help sect. Spasmodically unfunny, this self-satisfied guru mugs with the shamelessness of your most obnoxious uncle and cracks jokes that likely were lifted from the walls of public restrooms.
Pitka is known as the “love guru” for his series of self-love books (with hardy-har-har titles like “I Know You Are but What Am I?”), but he bristles at playing second fiddle to self-help heavyweight Deepak Chopra. Pitka’s shot at the big time arrives when the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs (Jessica Alba, “The Eye,” “Awake”) seeks his counsel.
It seems that the team’s star hockey player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”), has fallen into a slump because his estranged wife (Meagan Good, “Stomp the Yard”) is shacked up with Los Angeles Kings goalie Jacques Grande (singer Justin Timberlake), a Quebecois dubbed “Le Coq” for reasons you can probably deduce. If Pitka can use his spiritually enlightened wiles to reunite Roanoke and his lady love, the Maple Leafs have a chance at winning the Stanley Cup and Pitka is certain to land a coveted guest appearance on “Oprah.”
Then again, the plot is of little consequence. Director Marco Schnabel, who did second-unit directing on the third “Austin Powers” picture, seems aware of the script only occasionally, as the movie drifts in and out of consciousness and coherence. For the most part, the story line serves as a toilet seat on which Myers can make himself comfortable and let loose with a torrent of you-know-what.
And so we get ostensibly funny names, book titles and a tiresome riff on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” star Mariska Hargitay. Scatological humor takes center stage in the most unimaginative ways, but particularly noteworthy is the sheer volume of penis jokes that Myers and co-screenwriter Graham Gordy have managed to fit into a 90-minute running time. Don’t expect any inspired penile humor on the order of, say, “Superbad” or “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” This is more along the lines of Pitka mistaking a corn dog for a dog’s weenie. “The Love Guru” is a cinematic convention of bad penis jokes in which all the conventioneers wear name tags reading “Dick Richards.” Hey, Myers, I just gave you a freebie!
While the flick is an unequivocal Myers vanity project, no one gets out of this unscathed. Sir Ben Kingsley slums as Pitka’s severely cross-eyed spiritual mentor, Guru Tugginmypudha. Alba continues her streak for picking bad movies, while Jessica Simpson, Val Kilmer and Kanye West make ill-advised cameos (Stephen Colbert from TV’s “The Colbert Report” fares slightly better as a drug-addled sportscaster).
Then there is poor Verne Troyer. The actor, forever branded as “Mini-Me” from the “Austin Powers” franchise, shows up here as an excuse to deride little people. (Look! He’s little!) And if you think that’s funny, just wait till he farts, belches or shoots across a rink after being shocked by defibrillator paddles. Comedy has a place for crassness and cruelty, make no mistake, but generally it helps if you throw some humor in, too.