The Love Guru

"I Own You!" ~ Bollywood, Bar Fights, Ball Gazing And Stink Mop As Tools To Englightenment
When you sit down to watch a Mike Myers movie realize that you have made the conscious decision to view something totally inane, slapstick and crude. On the other hand, there is another valid line of thought that would argue anyone who would watch a Mike Myers film is incapable of rational, conscious thought. A point well taken I must admit. With that said, if you're still reading this review we know what camp you fall into.

In the '08 film `The Love Guru' Mr. Myers plays Guru Pitka, the second most popular spiritual teacher in the Occidental world, second to Deepak Chopra of course. Guru Pitka finally gets the opportunity to possibly move out of the number two position when he's hired by the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team (Jessica Alba) to restore the broken marital relationship between their star player and his estranged wife who has moved in with the Los Angeles Kings well endowed goalie (Justin Timberlake). If he's successful he will not only be handed a...

A Karmic Komedy
Forget about Mike Myers for a minute. Let's begin with Ben Kingsley, the Oscar winning actor who actually appears in "The Love Guru"; he plays a cross-eyed spiritual advisor from India, and his name is not a double entendre so much as it's a blatant sexual reference smushed into a single word. The sight of this man is hilarious, and yet I didn't want to laugh because I know that Kingsley has made so many better choices than this film. What possessed him to act in a film this unashamedly juvenile? Did he find the idea of nonstop [...] gags appealing? I might as well be asking myself the same questions, because in all honesty, "The Love Guru" often had me giggling like a six-year-old who heard his first dirty joke. But to call this movie a comedic masterpiece would be an insult to the very concept of comedy.

The plot focuses on Pitka (Myers), an American-born, Indian-raised guru who was taught by Kingsley's character to become an expert in matters of love. How, I'm not...

Miserably, Wretchedly Awful
I remember the negative rumblings when this film was in production. The advance screening reviews did not treat it well, and most reviews once it opened also were not good, some of them downright brutal. Then it was in and out of my local megaplexes in less than a month. Now it's on DVD, right after the end of the summer, not even waiting for the holiday market, not even tying into some kind of wacky Halloween marketing-thing.

Through all of these increasingly negative omens I kept faith, figuring, "Hey, it's Mike Myers, the man who brought us "Sprockets" on Saturday Night Live, the Wayne's World guy, the Austin Powers guy." I like to watch So I Married an Axe Murderer when it's on...

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