There is nothing to love here...

Mike Myers has never been one to baulk at penis jokes, juvenile potty humour, boyish smut, fart gags or scatological comedy. The actor produced a lucrative career by featuring in Saturday Night Live skits as well as the Austin Powers trilogy, and he lent his voice to the animated Shrek film series. The Love Guru is his latest comedy (I use the term "comedy" very loosely) and it was supposed to be a return to form for the successful actor who had spent the last 5 years hitting the big screen with Shrek sequels (there were many TV specials and direct-to-DVD spin-offs that he was involved in as well). His last live-action outing was 2003's Cat in the Hat...I doubt a comment is necessary.

For months preceding the release of The Love Guru, Hindu groups were protesting and urging for a boycott. The Hindus saw the film as being in bad taste and it offended them. After watching the film I can see their point. Perhaps it didn't offend me in the way it offends Hindus, but it certainly offends anyone with good taste in comedy. I'd urge a global boycott to be enforced as The Love Guru is a criminal waste of time and talent. Life is too short for filmmakers to spend months working on rubbish like this. Life is also too short for audience to spend 90 minutes watching this awful movie. With so many delayed projects (with great potential) waiting for cameras to roll, it's a mystery why celluloid is wasted on films like this. It's also a mystery how this film ever got funding. A straightforward donation to charity would have made everyone a lot happier. Only true 100% dedicated Mike Myers fans will find the film hilarious. Everyone else with good taste in comedy will watch the film stoney-faced and annoyed at the film's general dullness as well as the lack of any creativity. This is quite simply a shockingly appalling, self-indulgent, shallow, repetitive, juvenile piece of rubbish.

It feels like Mike Myers and co-writer Graham Gordy used leftovers from the Austin Powers trilogy in an attempt to generate most of the flimsy plot for The Love Guru. The film is a single-note succession of extended skits that never spawn a moment of hilarity. Never is it even a guilty pleasure! A clever situation involving an apple, a midget, an adult man and a bottle of water behind a white screen from Goldmember is funny...two elephants having sex on ice in the middle of a hockey game is not! Once two elephants commence an orgy, we realise how low the script has truly sunk and how desperate Myers was for a laugh.
All the gags revolve around conventional funny names (that stopped being funny years ago), burps, farts, diarrhoea sounds, peeing, defecating, testicles, and penises. One of the film's key scenes includes a mop fight with mops soaked in urine. The film starts with little-boy potty humour, and it stays that way throughout its duration.

The Love Guru denotes the lowest point in Myers' career. I used to like him...believe me I still laugh incessantly during the Austin Powers movies. But, with very little exceptions, I never want to see Mike Myers work in the film industry ever again!

The story tracks a "neo-Eastern, self-help spiritualist" known as Guru Pitka (Myers). As a child he was abandoned outside an ashram and subsequently raised by gurus. Now he's a celebrity guru, endlessly writing books and developing acronyms. He's hired to sort out romantic troubles between hockey player Darren (Malco) and his wife Prudence (Good). If Pitka can get the two back together, Darren's hockey team could finally win the Stanley Cup.
The problem with the film's story is its central character. Guru Pitka is a clichéd creation, but never is he bestowed with the fun clichés. There are numerous clichés one could employ to actually make this character funny - Pitka could be a successful fraud (who knows he's a fraud) who decides to drop the act to truly help someone, or perhaps Pitka could be an utter failure who still manages to offer knowledge and wisdom to people in need. Either of these would be really clichéd, but at least it'd be fun. It could also add some tension or possibility into this cold and lifeless film. As it is, watching Pitka deliver horribly written dialogue (and laughing at himself every time) while he frets about how he can go from the number two guru spot to number one (through the blessings of Oprah) makes him a total bore.

One must wonder how so many actors were attracted to this mess. Many cameos permeate a majority of the proceedings. Val Kilmer, Jessica Simpson, etc. In the more major supporting roles there's Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Ben Kingsley (this guy still wants to be respected and still wants his title of "sir" after starring in Uwe Boll's BloodRayne and this cinematic abomination?!) and Verne Troyer among others.
I have no idea how he did it, but Myers makes Alba look quite unattractive. In fact the whole cast look bored and listless. After the first 5 minutes, each actor looks as if they've regretted the decision to appear in the film. The material is notoriously unfunny, and this is reflected in the awfully weak performances.
Mike Myers must get a bit of credit for giving Pitka some energy. After the first few minutes, though, the accent is just plain annoying. There are a few moments during which the film shows promise and potential for what it could have been. The Bollywood-style musical numbers of The Joker and 9 To 5 are among them. But these are punctuated with Myers' self-indulgent eagerness to wallow in his obsessions - poor accents, innuendo, sexual talk and farting. Myers is so self-deluded that he actually believes he's creating comedy gold. In reality he's creating pure unadulterated shit!

Overall, The Love Guru is genuine hit-and-miss comedy. The jokes are repetitive and the entire film feels as if it could have been written by adolescent boys on the wall of a public toilet. Throughout the flick you'll feel embarrassed that you endured the labour to get your hands on this film - be it from a video store, at a cinema or catching a screening on TV. The only laughs to find are pity laughs at how dreadfully weak the gags are, or an amusing outtake at the end while credits are rolling. You'll certainly get the sense that you've seen it all before. If Myers wants to satisfy his obsessions of all things childish with a camera tracking him, that's his problem. If an audience is paying to watch the appalling result, suddenly it becomes ours.

1.4/10