What the Hell Were They Thinking?!

Enlightenment, my ass!

Cast of Characters:
Guru Pitka – Mike Myers
Jane Bullard – Jessica Alba
Jacques “Le Coq” Grande – Justin Timberlake
Darren Roanoke – Romany Malco
Prudence Roanoke- Meagan Good
Coach Punch Cherkov – Verne Troyer
Guru Tugginmypudha – Ben Kingsley

Director – Marco Schnabel
Writer – Mike Myers & Graham Gordy
Producer – Michael De Luca & Mike Myers
Distributor – Paramount Pictures
Running Time – 87 minutes
Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some comic violence and drug references.

Maurice Pitka (Mike Myers) is an American boy who’s raised in an Indian ashram along with his friend Deepak Chopra. Together, they are taught by cross-eyed Guru Tugginmypudha (Ben Kingsley).

Get it? Hey, guys, you get it?! His name is tugging my pudha. He’s referring to his dick! Get it?!

Yep… If you can believe it, it gets worse. Worse as in Guru Pecker Yanker fighting with piss-soaked mops.

Starring Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley.

His character is cross-eyed ’cause he jerks-off non-stop… You know… tuggin’ his pudha… aka his penis.

…

That must’ve been one bitchin’ paycheck.

Now grown up, Guru Pitka and Chopra come to America, where Chopra becomes a major celebrity and Pitka is relegated to #2 Guru in the world. That’s until Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), the beautiful new owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, asks for his help in reconciling her star player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) with his wife Prudence (Meagan Good). Mrs. Roanoke’s left her hubby high-and-dry for Los Angeles Kings stud Jacques “Le Coq” Grande (Justin Timberlake).

Ha-ha-ha-ha! Yeah, oh my God! It’s ’cause his dick is huge and it hits the ground with a sledge hammer like thud! The effort put into this script is second to none.

To think I’ve been wasting so much time on comedies written by two-bit hacks like Billy Wilder, Harold Ramis and John Hughes. What a bunch of fucking losers.

The timing of Darren and Prudence’s split couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time with the Stanley Cup Playoffs beginning. But so help him Shiva, Guru Pitka will muster all of his strength to reunite these two lovebirds.

If anything, just to appease the massive boner he’s got for Jane.

If you’re wondering why it feels like you don’t see Mike Myers in as many high-profile movies as you used to, you can blame The Love Guru.

By 2008, Myers had three successful franchises under his belt: Wayne’s World, Austin Powers and Shrek. Wayne’s World made him a star; and both Austin Powers and Shrek made him box office gold, with the latter broadening his appeal to families. The Love Guru, on the other hand, brought his career not just to a halt, it halted by way of a head-on collision into a brick wall at full, low-brow, gutter-humored speed.

I thought there would never come a day where I’d see something so grossly infantile it makes Happy Madison look like Wes Anderson, but as Dr. Ian Malcolm would say, “Uh – well… uh – uh – w-well… there it is.”

Reportedly, Myers came up with The Love Guru as a means of dealing with his grief over his father’s death, which led to him developing a close friendship with Deepak Chopra. Obviously, I’m not here to disparage or make light of his father’s death, and in fairness, his dealing with his father’s passing did give us the Austin Powers franchise as well which turned out pretty good. That said, one day I may have a son of my own, and if following my death he chooses to remember me through a series of lazy dick jokes I’d expect to see scribbled in some idiot junior higher’s trapper keeper, I’m poltergeisting the shit out of his home.

Myers is fully capable of producing jokes that are smart, witty and hysterically absurd (e.g., the product placement bit in Wayne’s World), but the shit he’s trying to pass off here as jokes is beyond sad, dragging lowest common denominator to all new pathetic lows I never believed were even possible to reach until now. I’m convinced not a single draft of any script was made throughout the making of The Love Guru, and if by chance one was, it was most likely etched out in crayon. But my guess is Myers sought inspiration through the unforgivably nasty graffiti etched all across the slimy stalls of a truck stop restroom. That would explain why every gag in this piece of shit is either a dick or poop joke.

I’m honestly surprised “Chad the fag suks dick” or “888-454-2670… Shemale, eats ass on first date” didn’t make the cut.

What did, though, was two humping elephants, so there’s that. You just gotta have two humping elephants, especially when they’re the cleverest gag in this film. Well, isn’t that just sad.

C’mon, you didn’t actually think it was Timberlake’s floor-thumping dick bit, did you?

Get it? Hey, guys, you get it?! His name is “Le Coq” Grande, ’cause his dick is huuuuuuuuge. Get it?! It’s just spelled all French like ’cause that makes dick sound all classy and stuff. You might ask why I’m repeating a tired dick joke I already made about Timberlake’s character earlier in this review… Okay, now you’re getting it. Now just stretch that tired and excruciatingly unfunny repetition for an entire 90-minutes of your precious life, and – well… voila!

Oh, and if you think “Le Coq” is bad, John Oliver’s character is – no joke – named Dick Pants. See, they’re genuinely not even trying there.

… Sigh… again… no joke.

This movie was written by grown men… I’m assuming.

Knowing that scatological humor – okay, no, a movie this stupid hasn’t earned the right to have big words used in its review. Knowing that poopies, boobies and pee-pee places can only take a movie so far, Myers and director Marco Schnabel stretch and stretch and pad the hell out of this movie by cramming in three full-length musical numbers. You know, ’cause what the world’s been missing all this time were sitar versions of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5”, Steve Miller’s “The Joker” and Extreme’s “More Than Words”. But even with all that additional padding, this film still somehow clocks in at only 87 minutes.

Then why does it feel like four hours then? Well, ’cause it sucks.

I mean, “More Than Words” is already insufferable enough in its original form, did we really need a remix that’s somehow even more insufferable?

This is all quite surprising coming from a man who took a 5-minute sketch show skit and helped spawn it off into two great comedies, an extremely difficult feat knowing the track record of not just comedy sequels, but SNL’s horrendous track record of translating skits into movies. Other than The Blues Brothers and both Wayne’s World films, I can’t think of a single other SNL property that was turned into a film that’s actually just borderline tolerable, much less good and you can forget about great. Out of those three standouts, Myers is responsible for two, which is what makes this rom-com dumpster fire all the more disappointing. He’s better than this trash.

Even more surprising, and the most damning of all the film’s many, many, many, many, fuckin-A righty-O maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany errs, is just how unlikable Myers is from beginning to end. Maybe he’s so degradingly bad here ’cause he wanted Justin Timberlake and eye candy Jessica Alba to look good? Give him credit, that takes a lot of effort to pull off here ’cause Timberlake is playing a literal walking/talking dick joke and Alba has yet to receive a shitty film offer she doesn’t like. But whether that’s the reason or not, it’s quite disheartening to see Myers playing a character that unintentionally winds up being a detestably obnoxious ass-hat, especially when he’s made a career out of being everything this meditating dick-bag isn’t. Wayne Campbell’s such a likable everyman; Austin Powers is highly charming in his own cheerfully odd way; and Shrek is one of the most endearing animated characters of the past 20-25 years. Guru Pitka, however, is neither likable, charming or endearing, but he blurts out penis references like it’s a Tourette’s tick, so he’s got that going for him at least, ladies.

Seriously, poor Alba. When you have to subject yourself to taking a role in that shitty Little Fockers movie just to wipe this film’s rank-ass stench of failure off you, that should be quite a sobering wake up call to how low you’ve sunk.

You’ll always have Sin City, though. Be still, my beating heart, Nancy Callahan.

Also, what makes absolutely no sense is how everyone acts like Pitka is this amazing genius, yet he never once gives off the slightest impression that he is. Maybe if that fact was handled with a touch of irony, it could possibly be forgiven, but that’s not the case here. God forbid this film show even the slightest bit of satirical prodding (’cause obviously self-help seminars aren’t ripe for satire in any way), much like how Austin Powers was a parody of the James Bond franchise. No, he’s simply a fucking moron whose self-help teachings boil down to sexually obvious acronyms, constantly sexually harassing Miss Bullard and an unfunny Mariska Hargitay reference. Here it’s used as a “Namaste” greeting that is so beaten to death throughout the movie that by the time the film reaches an anticlimactic cameo appearance by the actual Mariska Hargitay, the punchline it’s going for fails to land.

‘Cause you just don’t give a shit when it happens.

You know what, fuck it. I’m done. I just spent well over ten paragraphs dicussing a film that was probably pitched to the studio with nothing more than just a half-assed pencil drawing of a jizz-spurting dick. Can we just cue the humping elephants already?

Judgment: The Love Guru subjects all its movie-going victims with humor that depends solely on juvenile dick jokes, more dick jokes, even more dick jokes, dick jokes on top of those dick jokes, dick jokes playing tummy-sticks with other dick jokes, two humping elephants and the normally charming Mike Myers playing one of the most gratingly unlikable lead characters in this history of film. There’s bad comedies and then there’s depressing comedies. This career-killer kicks it down a couple more notches, down into the horrifying pits of hellish comedies like It’s Pat, Freddie Got Fingered, Norbit and anything by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer that are flat-out evil.

God help me, this movie is not only an insult to intelligence, it’s an insult to idiocy.

Sentence: Saddle up and bend over, pal… hope you’re fond of elephants.

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