Review of The Love Guru (2008) by Chads. — 19 Jun 2008

It hardly mattered that a lot of Americans were clueless as to what Mike Myers was satirizing when the titular character from "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" became something of a comic zeitgeist in the late-nineties and early 21st century.

That voice alone, an instrument in which Myers played all the right mercurical and randy notes, transcended the typical American moviegoer's limited grasp of film history. Myers brought swinging London across the Atlantic, and for a brief period, he was the only comic actor that mattered.

But subsequent sequels, were less funny, less swinging, as Myers' penchance for gross-out humor started to grow tiresome. Fat Bastard was his nadir. The trend continues here. Jokes about masturbation, flatulence, male genitalia, urine, and "midgets" inspires silence, not laughter.

And worst of all, the voice isn't funny. The Guru Pitka sounds like a child molester. And hockey? A comedy about hockey and Deepak Chopra? Myers, whose last notable appearance was playing straight-man to Kanye West as the rapper told a post-Katrina audience on live television that George W.

Bush didn't like black people, gets his revenge for playing the unwilling stooge. In "The Love Guru", there's the temptation to look at Darren Roanoke(Romany Malco), a black hockey player for the Toronto Maple Leafs, as a stand-in for West.

For the record, Roanoke has a smaller penis than Jacques Grande(Justin Timberlake), and is scared of his mother. Think about it. What could be more emasculating to a rap artist? And finally, "The Love Guru" makes reference not just once(Coach Punch Cherkov's office is just like the seven-and-a-half floor in Charlie Kaufman's Martin Flemmer building), but twice, to Spike Jonze's "Being John Malkovich".

The Los Angeles Times headline that proclaims Deepak Chopra's dominance over the Guru Pitka is an obscure reference to the John Cusack character bitching about living in the shadow of Derek Mantini(Ned Bellamy), who Craig Schwartz(Cusack) watches from his couch, as the populist puppeteer mounts a giant Emily Dickinson presentation("The Belle of Amherst") on live television.

The Jonze film establishes a skewered world where puppeteers matter, as does "The Love Guru", which overstates the importance of spiritualists like Deepak Chopra in the popular culture. That's the only cerebral component in this puerile, mean-spirited, and above all else, cynical, film, that's purported to be a comedy, but is more like an object of performance art that deconstructs comedy and the human heart.