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Director(s):	Marco Schnabel
Writer(s):	Graham Gordy, Mike Myers
Starring:	Ben Kingsley • Jessica Alba • Meagan Good • Mike Myers • Deepak Chopra • Justin Timberlake • Romany Malco
Genre:	Comedy
Website:	http://www.lovegurumovie.com/
Release Date:	June 20, 2008
Rated:

For taking such a long break from the spotlight, Mike Myers’s sense of humor certainly hasn’t changed. Ripe with all the traditional midget, fart and dick jokes, The Love Guru has little to offer the devoted Myers followers.

Dare I say it, but Mike Myers suffers the same affliction as Adam Sandler minus Sandler’s tendency to every now and then indulge in a serious piece of film making (see Punch Drunk Love or Reign Over Me). I thought that with the “end” of the Austin Powers dynasty maybe Myers would move on to something a little more edgy or imaginative but alas…he has not.

Guru Pitka (Myers) has struggled the duration of his professional advice peddling career to creep out from under the shadow of Deepak Chopra, the most popular self help guru in the world. To seal his status as a guru in his own right, Pitka takes on the task of reuniting Maple Leaf Hockey Star Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) with his wife (Meagan Good). Using a plethora of trademarked acronyms, Pitka helps Roanoke conquer various fears and anxieties to bring him back to a place where he can be happy with himself. What a great lesson right? Be content with who you are. Apparently everyone in this film needs to learn this lesson. It gets pretty damned tedious.

But wait! We saw Jessica Alba in the previews! What’s her deal?!?

Why is she ever in a movie? Eye candy. Serving no purpose other than the device by which Pitka comes to the US, Alba’s given a small throw away love story with Myers that does nothing more than fill the slower beats. Jessica Alba’s best and only great moment in The Love Guru comes as the absolutely final scene in a terrific nod to Bollywood. Quite awesome actually.

There’s very little redeeming this movie. You can count the laugh out loud moments on one hand and beyond that it’s Myers reusing the same jokes over and over again to decreasing amounts of success. How long can you keep laughing at a cross eyed Ben Kingsley? I can’t laugh at chastity belt jokes that feel like dumbed down versions of those used by Mel Brooks in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (which wasn’t even one of Brooks’s best). But don’t get me wrong: Mike Myers is still funny. In fact, the moments spent with his assistant can be tremendously well done, but these times are few and far between. He’s still got that comedic charm that lets him do some of the most outrageous things without raising the crowd to anger. He’s got talent, but it’s wasted here.

Speaking of wasted talent, let’s talk about Ben Kingsley.Why he would choose to take this on boggles my mind. Maybe he’d gotten tired of playing creepy curmudgeons and wanted a lighter role to balance his repertoire. I’m not sure. But considering his entire performance hinged on the audience finding crossed eyes and piss soaked mops hilarious, it counts as a failure in my book. Then we come to Justin Timberlake who can offer decent performances (Alpha Dog) or crapfests so bad you want to remove your eyes with a melon baller (Southland Tales). Here, he finds a safe middleground by playing a “cocky”rival hockey player to Malco’s Roanoke. Funny at times, contrived at others.

What would a Mike Myers film be without an assload of cameos? I mean it’s ridiculous the amount of star power touted by The Love Guru, and yet half of them were there out of good will. Myers may look like a one trick pony, but he’s a pony with a lot of recognizable friends. Among them: Oprah, Jessica Simpson, Kanye West and Val Kilmer. Heck he’s even got Jim Gaffigan and Stephen Colbert as sports announcers. I wanted The Love Guru to be good. I really did. I’ve really liked Myers ever since So I Married an Axe Murderer.

Unfortunately, The Love Guru becomes nothing but a parade of bad jokes and familiar faces that does nothing but break our hearts.