Caution. Mike Myers is back and on this occasion we’d be much happier seeing his murderous near namesake from the Halloween franchise. We are, by now, used to the Canadian’s slap-dash character driven comedy and its likely effects. Sometimes you get the Mike Myers who can take a thin, occasionally cleverly constructed stereotype and stretch it over two or three movies. And sometimes you get the Mike Myers who can take a thin, occasionally clever construct and run it into the ground.
The Love Guru falls into the latter category. Like Fat Bastard in the Austin Powers movies, Mr. Myers doesn’t seem to know when to say when with this unlovely creation.
Myers, who also co-wrote the screenplay, stars as the world’s number-two guru, a fuzzy logic peddler who dreams of appearing on Oprah and trumping arch rival Deepak Chopra as the king of squeezy pack mysticism. To achieve that goal, Myers agrees to broker a reconciliation between underperforming hockey superstar Romany Malco and his estranged wife Meagan Good. Unluckily, Ms. Good has already found post-marital bliss with a gigantically endowed super stud rival goalie (Justin Timberlake, the funniest thing in the film).
So far, so okay sounding. Despite the fact that Jessica Alba, playing (cough) Myers’ love interest, only pops up for approximately 17 seconds of screen time, there’s at least five times more plot than can be found in both Austin Powers sequels combined. There are even some bright ideas concerning the lavish living arrangements of California’s spiritual leaders and the importance of infantile humour in the healthy adult psyche.
Trouble is, Myers goes all out to prove this hypothesis by revelling in his own puerility. Every stupid noise, every silly voice, every groan making wordplay is repeated, rinsed and reused. How we didn’t laugh to discover the guru’s mantra was “Mariska Hargitay”. Though it barely qualifies as bemusing, let alone amusing, the script finds a way to replay this tedious gag some 227 times.
To add to our general discomfort a great many minutes are given over to superfluous, self-indulgent Bollywood versions of ‘Nine To Five’ and ‘The Joker’. No. There is no why.