The Guru film review

certificate_15

THE GURU

There's something about The Guru that leaves a bad taste in the mouth. What is meant to be a wry look at cross-cultural differences when a young Indian dance instructor comes to the Big Apple turns out to be a mainly joke-free affair with a script that reinforces racial and social stereotypes.

Unlike the 1968 film The Party in which Peter Sellers bemuses a house full of Hollywood bigwigs with his bumbling Indian fish out of water, The Guru falls short in every department.

Jimi Mistry plays the lead role of Ramu Gupta, who arrives in New York with dreams of making it big. Sorely disappointed with what he finds, he is reduced to waiting in Indian restaurants until he is cast in a major motion picture by the oleaginous director Dwain (Michael McKean). The film turns out to be a porno however and the only consolation for Ramu is that he meets his co-star Sharonna (Heather Graham), a fount of knowledge and wisdom.

When Ramu inadvertently fills in for a drunken Guru at an exclusive New York event, he uses the wisdom gained from Sharonna to impress the gullible socialites. Soon he is the talk of Manhattan and becomes known as 'The Guru of Sex'. The trouble is that all of his so-called wisdom is second-hand from a minor porn star.

Mistry cuts an awkward figure in the lead - although he has had decent roles in some British movies (East is East, Born Romantic), he is far too one-dimensional to be convincing in this latest appearance.

What is Heather Graham doing in this film? Ever since she won the Movie Star of Tomorrow in 1999 after her roles in The Spy Who Shagged Me and Bowfinger, she has made some very strange career choices. Her recent list of films reads like a compendium of movies you don't want to see (Say It Isn't So, From Hell, Sidewalks of New York, Killing Me Softly), and she does herself no favours by appearing in The Guru. Why she felt she needed another role playing a porn star is anyone's guess.

Elsewhere decent American comedic talent is also wasted. Michael McKean struggles valiantly as the manager of the porn outfit, Christine Baranski becomes increasingly embarrassed as the cookie mother figure and Marisa Tomei will probably hope this is a blip on her resurging career. All three have to deal with material that is way below their talent and it can only be hoped their pay cheques made up for the holes in the script they vainly try to cover.