The Love Guru film review

certificate_12A

THE LOVE GURU

In a year that has already given us both Meet the Spartans and Meet Dave as two examples of the worst in Hollywood comedy along comes The Love Guru, an abysmal romp from Mike Myers. The judges at next year's Razzie awards are going to have a tough time as American audiences voted with their feet and left Myers' much-hyped comedy high and dry at the box office. British viewers are well advised to do the same.

This is the kind of film where you spend a great deal of time wondering how it ever got made in the first place. But after the worldwide success of his Austin Powers franchise, Myers was given the keys to the kingdom and nobody on board was able to say that the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. As a result, what Myers may have intended as a reinvention with a brand new character and a lesson in comedy has turned into a masterclass of how not to do it.

Myers stars as the guru Pitka, an Indian love doctor who comes to the States in order to usurp everyone's favourite self-help practitioner Deepak Chopra. Everyone else in the film, from Ben Kingsley's painful Indian mentor to Jessica Alba's young millionairess, exists solely as a comedic foil for Myers. As a result it all hinges on whether Myers' character is funny or not. And he's most certainly not.

In order to achieve his objectives in the US, Pitka attempts to fix a romantic feud between two leading hockey players (Romany Malco and Justin Timberlake) in an attempt to land the golden ticket of an interview on the Oprah show. Myers overblown creation becomes quickly tiresome as he mugs to the camera and hammers home the punchline of a succession of woeful gags, which alternate between being unfunny or offensive. As the misery unfolds on screen, the audience's silence becomes more and more apparent.

The film is a vulgar paean to one of Myers' comedy heroes, Peter Sellers, whose 1968 film The Party saw him play a bumbling Indian movie extra who accidentally gets invited to a Hollywood party. Although by no means perfect, Sellers' film has enough about it to make it still funny today, which is more than will be said for Myers' forgettable mess.

Paul Hurley