Mike Myers Expends His Karma

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The New York Sun

Loosely assembled as a spoof of celebrity self-indulgence on the road to enlightenment, “The Love Guru” is no more than an excuse for its silly-pants star and creator, Mike Myers, to crack pee-pee jokes for nearly an hour and a half. Indeed, Mr. Myers is a Van de Graaff generator of pee-pee jokes.

As Guru Pitka, the spiritual guide of the movie’s title, he dispenses erotic wisdom to the Hollywood elite through endless innuendos and puns that derive their humor from an appreciation of bodily fluids and functions that might best be promoted by a 6-year-old or a very bored and drunk traveling salesman. This disciple of Guru Tugginmypudha (a bearded, cross-eyed Ben Kingsley) has no maniacal Dr. Evil to duel. Just Deepak Chopra, the über-guru as self-help rock star whose singular command of the Oprah-sphere has childhood friend Pitka in a perpetual lather.

Enter Jessica Alba. Eye candy of the highest order, the actress never seems to do anything in her movies, yet somehow no amount of screen time is too much. The makers of “The Love Guru” embrace this paradox with vigor, installing La Alba as Mr. Myers’s unlikely love interest, and the path to toppling Mr. Chopra (one of innumerable cameos by celebrities “as themselves”). Ms. Alba’s Jane Bullard is the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey franchise, whose failure to win the Stanley Cup might change if her star stickman, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), can win his girlfriend, Prudence (Meagan Good), back from the swarthy Quebecois paws of Jacques Grande (Justin Timberlake, unrecognizably hirsute). Grande, who goes by the nickname “Le Coq,” wields a secret weapon, and it’s not the killer rooster he posts outside his mansion. The neurotic Darren can’t function on the ice in such romantic disarray.

That’s as much of the plot as (vaguely) matters. If Pitka can reunite Darren with his errant love, he’s guaranteed a spot on “Oprah.” All of it sets up a gonzo essay in self-actualization laced with flashbacks to Pitka’s youth (featuring gags about tea strained through Mr. Kingsley’s nostrils and a contest that involves dodging mops soaked in urine), sight gags featuring “Mini-Me” Verne Troyer, and a rehash of every hockey-related guffaw since “Slap Shot,” a near-classic sports comedy on which the Canadian Mr. Myers was no doubt weaned.

As a writer and actor, Mr. Myers had no compunction stretching out his “Austin Powers” franchise to three films, somehow extending the “Get Carter”/007 spoofery well past its expiration date. But since he was broadly parodying the 1960s, there was plenty of pop culture to plunder, and a gallery of nutty characters (many played by Mr. Myers himself, in an array of inspired costumes) to hang his childish riffs upon. “The Love Guru” takes some very mild shots at superficial spiritualism, and then suffocates your laughter by repeating them ad nauseum.

Here is one of many examples. One of the few clever jokes in the film involves a sacred greeting that sounds an awful lot like “Mariska Hargitay.” Rather than leave it at that, however, the gag gets recycled about 375 times, leading up to — wait for it — a cameo by the actual Ms. Hargitay, which sets up — yes — a gag about “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” the cop show in which the actress stars. The whole movie employs this model of diminishing returns, ever alert to swiftly cut back to one of Mr. Myers’s inane facial expressions as if to say, “Yeah, I know. I’m a rich, lazy comedian who cranked this junk out in time for summer multiplex jollies, and I’m so shameless, and you love me for it, don’t you?”

There are rare moments of effort, such as the full-blown Bollywood-style finale, set to a raga-fied version of the Steve Miller Band’s “Space Cowboy,” and, for comic scholars, Mr. Myers’s occasional vocal impersonations of Peter Sellers, a shout-out that this film’s core audience won’t get. Pee-pee jokes are forever, but “The Love Guru” is a sign that Mr. Myers is close to exhausting his brand. His inner child needs to go to reform school.


The New York Sun

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