film: The Love Guru

The Love Guru sounded promising pre-release. Hell, it sounded deliciously exciting. Mike Myers had spent nearly a year honing the film’s central character (a guru, unsurprisingly)  in comedy clubs across the States. Given the actor’s famous attention to detail, I would have bet my house on a cast-fire hit. Thank God I didn’t. I would have been begging in a cardboard box right now. This movie isn’t just bad. It’s one of the worst films ever made. It’s disgracefully weak actually. A turkey to end all turkeys.

So what’s the plot? Well Mike Myers plays Pitka, American’s second best New Age guru. Harbouring a desire to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show, Pitka is called upon by an ice-hockey team to counsel their star player who not only has problems with his wife but also his dominating mother.

If I may, let me tell you a 100% true story, cross my heart and hope to die. Actually, I don’t really hope to die – that’s a daft thing to say. I’d much rather I lived for a while longer. Or was at least cryogenically frozen and then could come back when England has weather like they do in the West Indies or at least Megaluf. Anyway, back to the story. The 100% bone fide, true story.

Yesterday, I got on the 295 bus which takes me back from the office to home. Going onto the top deck, I found a seat unsoiled by the Great British public and sat opposite a plump young man engrossed in a magazine. Now when I say plump, I have to clarify. He wasn’t killer whale fat, he was just…well-padded. A man after my own book. Now, After a while, curiosity got the better of me and I took a look at the name of the magazine. And there it was - in all of it’s 3 dimensional glory…Ultimate Abs!

Now this guy was absolutely, totally and utterly engrossed in Ultimate Abs. I could see him poring over every single page with the scrutiny of a 12-year-old who has just bought his first copy of Playboy. Or even possibly Mayfair but almost certainly not Razzle.

Yes this guy was clearly ready to hit the gym, get pumping and turn himself into Arnold Swarznegger. But do you know what happened next? Check this out. Whilst looking at Page 14 of the magazine: headline: “get your abs: keep your abs”, my friend dipped his hand into a plastic supermarket bag and pulled out a family sized packet of mini-mars bars. During the rest of the journey, my abs-obsessed pal ate not 1, not 2 but 7 mini mars bars, whilst still reading his magazine.

What was going through his mind? Did he actually think that mini-mars bars might have some positive effect on his abdominal muscles? Did he really think that the solution to all his physical woes lay with septuplet candy consumption? Did it never occur to his porky little brain that eating 15,000 calories might have a just a teeny weeny effect on his ambitions to look like Rambo.

Well I’ll tell you exactly what is. Mike Myers attempts to make anyone laugh with his latest film, The Love Guru. It is, without question, the worst flick I have watched since The Pig Abattoirs of Lucerne: Revenge of the Cleaver. The problem is straightforward, there simply aren’t any good jokes, or any jokes at all for that matter, and the central character is appaling, a sort of Austin Powers lapsing into occasional Shrek. Hell, Myers even resorts to casting little man Verne Troyer again in order to make gags about size. While this wore thin in 2002’s Goldmember, it is now just lazy and offensive.

The Love Guru descends into a parody of a comedy film with a slew of jokes about excrement, breasts, bottoms, penises and farts. Can you remember the last time you actually laughed at a fart joke? So there you have it. A misguided, delusional and ultimately sad attempt at comedy from a man who once had the midas touch. Avoid at all costs. Go work on your abs instead. No stars.

For the best of the rest:

The NY Times:
It’s likely that the younger generation of moviegoers knows Mike Myers primarily as the voice of Shrek. It has been five years since “The Cat in the Hat,” his last live-action movie, and six since the third “Austin Powers” picture, so a bit of reintroduction may be in order. Kids who wonder just who this guy is — and grownups with a merely casual rather than morbidly obsessive interest in pop-culture ephemera — will need some remedial instruction.

Variety:
Myers developed the character of Guru Pitka via a sort-of workshop process of New York stage appearances, and for the most part, this spoof of self-help spiritualism feels like a “Saturday Night Live” bit fluffed and stretched to theatrical length. Many of the jokes bring to mind Three Stooges-type farce (Ben Kingsley’s master guru is named — now sound this out — Tugginmypudha), including a seemingly endless array of self-improvement acronyms like Be Loving & Open With My Emotions — all trademarked, of course.

Timeout:
They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Well ‘they’ obviously haven’t seen ‘The Love Guru’, an overgrown dirt-patch of clunking juvenilia from the sick mind of writer/star Mike Myers which sees the once-heralded Canadian funnyman now frantically scrabbling at the piss/shit/snot-flecked depths of the low-brow comedy slop bucket.