The Love Guru (2008)
Directed by Marco Schnabel
Written by Mike Myers, Graham Gordy
Starring Mike Myers, Justin Timberlake, Romany Malco, Jessica Alba
Release Date June 20th, 2008
Published June 19th, 2008
Memo to comedy writers and directors: Just because a character in a movie does a particular thing, does not make that thing funny. For example, in the new "comedy" The Love Guru co-written by and starring Mike Myers, just because Myers' Guru Pitka fights a man with a urine soaked mop and ends up hit in the face with said mop does not make the action of getting hit with a urine soaked mop funny.
The Love Guru operates entirely under the delusion of it's own brilliance. The Love Guru stars Mike Myers as the world's number 2 guru, behind Deepak Chopra, Guru Pitka is the character's name and Myers is as offensively caricaturing Indian culture as you imagine. The Love Guru proceeds from scene to scene making one joke about genitalia after another assuming each is funnier than the next because Myers himself seems so entertained by the joke.
One of the hallmarks of The Love Guru is Myers' enjoyment of his own humor. Guru Pitka is almost always the first to laugh at his own jokes and it isn't a stretch to imagine that Myers as well is the first to laugh at the jokes he wrote for himself. What accounts for a plot in The Love Guru involves a star hockey player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), who stinks on ice after his wife, Prudence (Meagan Good), leaves him for a rival goalie, Jaques 'Le Coq' Grande (Justin Timberlake). Are you laughing yet? I know I wasn't.
The Guru Pitka is hired by the owner of the hockey team, Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), to try and reunite the hockey star with his lady love and by extension help him regain his ability to play hockey like the star he once was. Guru Pitka believes that if he he accomplishes the task of rescuing this hockey player's lost mojo, he will earn a coveted slot on the Oprah Winfrey show and a chance to surpass his nemesis Deepak Chopra as the world's number one guru.
You can call that a plot, I've gone to great effort to make it read like one for my own sake. In reality however, the film is really just a sloppy, irredeemable mess of penis jokes, poo jokes and other such lowbrow bits that are broken up briefly Myers' attempt to convince us that Guru Pitka could romance Jessica Alba. I would have a hard time believing Myers without this silly character would be able to date Jessica Alba, asking us to believe that she would be interested in Myers as this offensive caricature of a character is a disservice to both our intelligence and Ms. Alba's integrity.
Do you know how I can tell Jessica Alba is a good actress, because she doesn't reflexively wretch when Myers is doing his shtick. That she can vaguely feign romantic interest in the character of Pitka is an acting feat that no actress could pull off. Alba is thoroughly defeated by the task but she gives it more of an effort than most would. Her professionalism is to be commended even it is unwarranted for this lowbrow awfulness.
I realize that Vern Troyer considers Mike Myers his friend and that he's up for the kinds of gags Myers likes to do, but his casting here as the coach of the hockey team is a perfect example of what makes The Love Guru so awful. Myers thinks it is simply funny that a little person exists in the world. That's it, that's the joke for Mike Myers and my evidence is every joke related to Vern Troyer in The Love Guru. Myers simply thinks the existence of a man of Vern Troyer's size is funny and he gets away with it because Troyer willingly goes along with the gag and we've allowed Myers to get away with it.
Idiotic to an ungodly degree, mindless and insulting, The Love Guru will rank among the years worst films of 2008.
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