The Love Guru (2008) Movie Review

Mike Myers’ return to the big screen is unwelcomed in the repetitive and annoying comedy The Love Guru. Though not as painful to watch as You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, The Love Guru is nearly as weak a film as Myers’ last live-action diabolical The Cat in The Hat.

The film relies heavily on sex humor, mostly penis references that just become tiresome, as do the stereotypical jokes, especially the ones again poised at Verne Troyer, who played Mini-Me in the Austin Powers films. In The Love Guru, Troyer plays a disgruntled hockey coach and once again shoots Myers the bird.

Myers plays Guru Pitka, who is a self-help American guru that was raised in India and has secondary status to the more popular Deepak Chopra. However, his luck changes when he is hired Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), who is the owner of the NHL Toronto Maple Leafs. Pitka is given the task of getting Bullard’s star player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) back with his estranged wife Prudence (Megan Good), so that his dreadful play will turn back into All-Star form. This is all happening why the Leafs are in the Stanley Cup Finals, and Prudence is now seeing the rival LA King’s French goaltender, Jacques “Le Coq” Grande (Justin Timberlake), who has the largest possessed man sex organ in the world. If Pitka completes his task, he will be given two million dollars, and also secure a guest spot on the Oprah Winfrey show, which could trust his career into stardom like Deepak Chopra.

The Love Guru is directed by Marco Schnabel, and is written by Myers and Gordy. However, the film is controlled totally by Myers in a creative sense. The over the top sexual humor that just repeats itself over and over drains the film of any creativity. Myers is a talented comedic actor and has conceived some funny characters like Wayne Campbell and Austin Powers, but he strikes out with Guru Pitka. The film does have some laugh-out moments, but shortly after you laugh at that one joke it is repeated in a far less light. There is no reason why Myers’s continuous obsession with inside-sex jokes can not merit an R rating for a film like this. His references are filthy, but the teenagers are his target audience. Like past Myers films, he includes numerous musical numbers, which is one of the few bright spots of this film. The numbers included in The Love Guru are Myers’ rendition of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” Extreme’s “More Than Words,” just to name a few. The characters themselves are fun in terms of a comedic sense, in which many stereotypes are poked fun at in a philosophical sense from Guru Pitka. Though The Love Guru is very short, it runs out of gas quickly and by its conclusion it becomes very desperate, including elephant mating on the ice of a hockey arena.

Myers has his Guru Pitka down in precision and delivery, however, his performance is one of the weakest of his career considering what he has delivered before. It is also un-Myers like that he did not play more than one character as he has done in the past. Jessica Alba is once again lovely to look at, but shows no range as the hockey owner Jane Bullard. Romany Malco, who was so funny in The 40-Year Old Virgin, is practically wasted in his role as Darren Roanoke, as is Megan Good, who plays his wife. Justin Timberlake masters the French accent and seems to have a lot of fun with his karma as Darren’s rival Jacques. It is nice to Verne Troyer back into film as the hot-headed coach Punch Cherkov, which is better than seeing him of VH1’s The Surreal Life; hopefully he can get some more work. Lastly, Sir Ben Kingsley overplays his role as the cross-eyed teacher of Myers’ Pitka as Guru Tugginmypudha.

The Love Guru is a failure for Mike Myers and company and has become a flop at the box office due to its weak comedy and the overcrowded market place. Myers is a talent, hopefully he can rebound.