Love Guru: You CAN Mess With the Guru!

Sorry about the continuing use of "You Don't Mess With..." This will be my last one.

The Love Guru is a movie I could have lived the rest of my life without seeing. In fact, I'd probably be a more humorous person if I had not seen this movie. That's right, this is an anti-funny comedy.

Mike Meyers of Austin Powers icon shamefully shifts gears as Pitka, a Hindi Guru in America who is miserable because he's the number 2 guru, behind Deepak Chopra. His agent says it's because he's not on the Oprah show, so he takes the job of helping the star Darren of the Toronto Maple Leafs (Romany Malco of TV's "Weeds" and Baby Mama) get his wife back from the L.A. King's star goalie, Jacques "de Coq" Grande (Justin Timberlake). His agent says this will book him on Oprah so he can beat Deepak Chopra. (Noticed how no one laughed when reading that last line about Oprah and Chopra? That's how the movie plays out.) Pitka flirts with the Toronto hockey team's owner, Jessica Alba.

The movie is a long-running series of penis jokes that haven't been funny since elementary school. The audience that laughed were the same people every time, and it said something about their maturity. I'm a Catholic, and I felt offended for the Hindus in this movie than I was offended for myself in The Da Vinci Code.

Most of the humor was recycled from Austin Powers. There were midgets jokes at the coach of the Maple Leafs, things unnecessarily shaped like penises, references to penises, references to sex, and sports announcers on drugs. Wait, sports announcers on drugs was actually Dodgeball and it was funny. Here, it is unoriginal and the punchlines can be seen a mile away.

I am saddened to say the plot seemed half-usable. A spiritual guide helps a sports star get his wife back from the star of the other team. It could blend spirituality with sports with romance. I realized this could be done Malco gives a convincing performance that there are no punchlines as he explains to his wife he left her because he was afraid she would leave him if he didn't win the Stanley Cup. This is the only scene taken seriously, and it is in Malco's performance we can tell there is no joke here.

Is it entertaining? No.

Is it for everyone? No one actually. Espically not Hindus.

Is it memorable? Yes. It is already up for the Razie's "Worst Movie of 2008" as well as the Red Tie's "Insult to the Industry."

My suggestion: Go see Get Smart.