The Love Guru (2008)
There is still a very fresh humor flowing through Mike Myers’ 1997 breakthrough Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Timing, delivery, and nearly every joke has a quality that feels like it could easily prove successful on FunnyOrDie and other modern comedy outlets. Mike Myers was at the top of his game with the character of Austin Powers and his arch nemesis, Dr. Evil. Sometimes playing them simultaneously in one scene, Myers brought this excellent quality of discomfort to the characters, Powers making jokes to please only himself, and Evil trying desperately to instigate some authentic laughter from his dry, agonizing sense of wit.
Come the sequels, and Mike Myers has introduced us to a few new, and slightly questionable, personas. Utilizing his great Scottish accent he hilariously used in So I Married an Axe Murderer, Myers gives us Fat Bastard. A humorous sight, with some exceptional one-liners, but otherwise, a rather tiring extremity. However, The Spy Who Shagged Me has its redeeming qualities. Goldmember pushes things a bit. The dazed Dutchman aptly named Goldmember, seriously drops off after only a few jokes. The film is a stretch, and the notion for a continuation seemed iffy, and rightfully fell apart.
In a world without Austin Powers 4, Mike Myers swims below the surface, gathering up more and more characters to exercise. More villains, more weird asides for Austin Powers to come across, but void of Powers, what can one do with such ideas? Well, Mike Myers went ahead and spit out The Love Guru. A tale of finding true love in the world, the film follows Pitka, a motivational speaker out of India who solves the romantic complications of others as compensation for his own inability to make love. Sound risky? Oh yeah.
As a protagonist, Pitka floats around in this constant mental innuendo which he only seems to know how to express through excruciating acronyms, sometimes on-screen text and sometimes literally on a powerpoint. He never exhausts the heightened sense of bad humor he so consistently regurgitates. The only thing that makes The Love Guru a movie is the loose plotline that strings it along. Really, the film just serves as a rotten excuse to recycle Austin Powers jokes through a shaky Hindi accent and make quips about elephant shit.
So, say you thought the criticism of Fat Bastard and Goldmember was a bit harsh. You know, they do their part and add variation to the series. Fair enough, I will accept that. Imagine though, for just a moment, that either character had their own movie where they aimlessly wander about with Justin Timberlake and Jessica Alba. The Love Guru is exactly that. A character who, if necessary, only needs a few minutes of screen time, gets an entire 87 minutes.
Really, the film is sincerely depressing. We saw the character of Austin Powers completely taken aback by the name “Alotta Fagina”, while we are the ones left to double take at “Guru Tugginmypudha” and “Satchabigknoba”. That’s just borderline racism! OH, and not to mention the aforementioned Tugginmypudha was played by none other than Ben Kingsley. Ben Kingsley! As in the man who successfully played Gandhi, giving a powerful, moving performance. Seriously? This kind of cameo?
The Love Guru is bad on many levels. No, it is horrible on all levels. The one redeeming quality I found were the desperate routines of two sports announcers played by Jim Gaffigan and Stephen Colbert, but even with that, I have little to say. A true shame, The Love Guru only left me with disappointment, regret, depression and a little twist in my stomach as I said my dutiful goodbye to Mike Myers and his once fresh brand of comedy.
Fahrenheit 406 