Awfully Good: The Love Guru

The Love Guru (2008)

Director: Marco Schnabel
Stars:Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake

Is there a plot?

A perverted holy man attempts to reunite a star hockey player with his wife in order to get on Oprah.

What’s the damage?

THE LOVE GURU looked so bad that I never had any interest in seeing it, even in an Awfully Good sense. However, it seems like lately everyone and their legal guardian has been suggesting this movie for the column. (Seriously, did it just premiere on cable or did Mike Myers’ family get ahold of my email address?) So being a man of the people, I gave it a shot. The verdict: I hate all of you that sent this in.

I’ll make it simple. Let’s play a game this week. It’s called, “Who thought it was a good idea?”

Mike Myers gets the inspiration for THE LOVE GURU.

Who thought it was a good idea to…

Center a movie around an unbelievably immature holy man who’s obsessed with penises. (Or is it penes. I never can remember.) I love a good dick joke as much as the next guy (unless the next guy is George Michael), but this is ridiculous. Myers doesn’t stop riffing on genitalia, from penile puns to schlong stories. It’s like he thinks literally saying the word “penis” is going to make you laugh. There’s also a dinner with ballsack, a subplot about Justin Timberlake’s giant dong, a recurring joke about grown men playing “Ballgazer” and Stephen Colbert going Madden pecker-style. If you giggle with delight at names like Tugginmypudha or Hathasmalvena, then you a) are easily amused and b) will make THE LOVE GURU your favorite new movie.

Copy the humor and joke format from Austin Powers, but poorly. The trademark Mike Myers comedy style is definitely present, from constant play-on-words to nonstop fart and poop jokes. Except you know how in GOLDMEMBER they started to parody the jokes from the first two movies because they had gotten stale and predictable? In LOVE GURU, Myers ignores that and just retreads the same crap he came up with 15 years ago. (And yes, the Shrek voice makes an appearance.)

Mike Myers polishes the script for THE LOVE GURU.

Hire talented comic actors and waste them. This movie has Romany Malco, Stephen Colbert, Jon Oliver, Jim Gaffigan and Daniel Tosh. It also has a rule that none of them are allowed to do anything funny. Aside from Colbert’s one drug-fueled rant, I can’t even recall a setup for a joke. Also, Verne Troyer exists in this film only to be made fun of and abused for his height. No wonder the guy’s an alcoholic.

Have Sir Ben Kingsley play a cross-eyed Indian guy who farts and makes people fight with his piss. <– This.

Dear Mr. Kingsley,
Please return your Oscar for GANDHI to us at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Make Jessica Alba fall in love with Mike Myers. Actually the main issue is hiring the actress, who has no comedic chops at all, for a comedy. And then they have the gall to give her a romantic subplot with Myers. I can see the Guru Pitka scoring with Linda Hunt or present day Melanie Griffith. But Alba? Suck my balls, common sense.

Cast Justin Timberlake as a French-Canadian. Timberlake can give good performances with the right material (see THE SOCIAL NETWORK or BLACK SNAKE MOAN for proof), but this is not the right material. The guy does his best with the character, but you can only do so much with a Celine Dion-loving Canuck named Jaque Le Coq whose sole purpose is his massive member.

David Cronenberg’s X-MEN featured a disturbing new take on Cyclops.

Hire a director with no experience. Longtime Myers cohort Jay Roach wisely stayed far away from THE LOVE GURU. So who did they find to direct it? A production assistant from AUSTIN POWERS. Okay, that’s not fair. Marco Schnabel was also the Additional Second Unit Director on MEET THE PARENTS. But for seriously, was nobody else in Hollywood willing to attach their name to this movie? I can’t say I blame them.

Let Mike Myers continue to do musical numbers. One or two tongue in cheek song-and-dance bits…okay. But this movie has multiple music segments and Bollywood performances that are played straightforward and have nothing to do with anything. For example, a cover of Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” inexplicably closes the film. Oh wait, I get it! The guru’s real name is Maurice, which is also a name mentioned once in the song. Brilliant!

When Joseph Merrick wanted to play hockey, nobody had the heart to tell him no.

End the movie with two elephants f*cking. That is not a metaphor for the colossal mess this movie represents. The final climactic moment in THE LOVE GURU involves two live elephants having sex during the Stanley Cup finals. How is this in any way legal?! And I don’t just mean in terms of the rules of hockey. How is it legal for Mike Myers to put this in a movie and show it to an unsuspecting public who paid some form of currency for it? Surely there must be some UN human rights charter that protects us from this kind of stuff.

“Best” Line

A sampling of some of the film’s most immature attempts at humor i.e. dick and fart jokes.

“Best” Parts

1) The emotional climax which involves two elephants having sex. If you enjoy this, may I suggest the elephant masturbation scene from FREDDY GOT FINGERED.

2) Sir Ben Kingsley. Farts. Urine. Mops. Shame.

3) Mike Myers gets in to a fight with a cock while Justin Timberlake sings Celine Dion. I can think of nothing more horrifying than this.