The Love Guru

Michael Myers knows what he likes, and what he likes is pulling cutsey faces, making bad puns, going for the obvious joke and then pulling it back with a joke about how obvious the last joke was. Which doesn't automatically make for a bad movie, but in The Love Guru's case, the brief attempts to give Myers some background to do his act against are overwhelmed by Myers desire to, well, do his act. Put another way, there's enough clues in The Love Guru to suggest that the other characters in the film find Myers character - The Guru Pitka, an intensely silly relationship councillor driven by the desire to take over Deepak Chopra's position as the number one guru - as annoying as the audience does. But despite that, Pitka just keeps on pulling faces and making bad puns while the story lurches on around him. Even the fairly basic story could have been okay if Myers had toned it down a bit: Pitka is called in by the new and insecure owner (Jessica Alba) of a Canadian hockey team to get her star player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) back with the love of his life, and get the love of Roanoke's life out of the clutches of his over-endowed rival (Justin Timberlake). So far so good, until Myers starts setting midgets on fire and flinging the mops soaked in piss around while a cross-eyed Ben Kingsley (as the guru's guru) watches on. To be fair, while this is largely a waste of time, at least it's a waste of time that's consistent with the trajectory that Myer's career's been taking for the last decade or so. So if you liked the last Austin Powers movie but thought it wasn't stupid and gross enough, this ones for you.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #432)