The unfunny clips, the badmouthing about Myers, the sheer presence of Jessica Alba. All signs point to this thing being a catastrophe on an epic scale.
Though, I must confess, I find some of the little "Mini-Sutras" on the movie's YouTube page kinda funny. And "Mariska Hargitay" is funny, too! But the rest of it? Ugh. I mean, Mike Myers is a funny guy. And he's had years to put something together that could match, if not better, his Austin Powers success. And yet he chose... a comedy about his own spiritual enlightenment? After his father passed away in 1991, Myers became despondent. His depression eventually led him to the writing of spiritual salesman Deepak Chopra. The two became fast friends and Myers has been on a journey of awakening since, to hear him tell it. Which is fine. We're all entitled to a little happiness, obviously, but a whole tent-pole summer comedy based on a character and experience that is completely unrelatable to most audiences seems... a little misguided. It just seems wildly out of touch at best and self-indulgent and preachy at worst. One who wonders just who the hell greenlit this thing. Paramount must be awfully trusting of Myers. Or, they're scared.
The Love Guru also rated a measly 14% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer and the concensus:The Love Guru features far too many gross-out gags, and too few earned laughs, ranking as one of Mike Myers' poorest outings.
And finally, the Village Voice weighs in with the following:
Mike Myers likes ice hockey. He also likes Deepak Chopra, a little bit too much. So he pulled together a bit of hockey and a whole lot of Chopra and called it a plot. Building a movie around the efforts of an also-ran celebrity guru to sort out the internal politics of the Toronto Maple Leafs was Myers's first mistake. His second was to seek Chopra's blessing and throw him a cameo, thus fluffing a golden opportunity to take a good, strong whack at the guru industry. Kitted out in an orange shirt, Dali mustache, brown-cow eyes brimming with faux-sympathy and lechery, and a fluid libido, Myers's Guru Pitka, a shaman cursed with lagging behind Chopra on the pop-psych charts, is too like his source to be really funny or really cutting. Indeed, he’s a bit of a dear, and completely upstaged by the charm of a bunch of mega-stars ready and waiting to spoof themselves. Team manager Jessica Alba romps adorably through a goofy Bollywood dance sequence. Goalie Justin Timberlake gives his all to a sing-off with a Céline Dion impersonator. And Ben Kingsley, as a cross-eyed Zen master, hasn’t been this funny since he swanned around in that outsized diaper in Gandhi. The rest is disposable. Now and again some pungent writing (the script is by Myers with Graham Gordy) leaks through to poke fun at the excruciating banality of guru wisdom. But mostly it’s dreary dick jokes and elephant poop, slack directing by Marco Schnabel (a second unit on the Austin Powers movies), and, of all fatal errors, Mike Myers, shooting for cuddly.
UPDATE: The New York Times weighs in:
. . . by the time Guru Pitka (Mr. Myers) says “Mariska Hargitay” to Ms. Hargitay herself, it’s somehow less amusing than it should be.
Which might sum up “The Love Guru” in its entirety but only at the risk of grievously understating the movie’s awfulness. A whole new vocabulary seems to be required. To say that the movie is not funny is merely to affirm the obvious. The word “unfunny” surely applies to Mr. Myers’s obnoxious attempts to find mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, “The Love Guru” is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again.
And this is, come to think of it, something of an achievement. What is the opposite of a belly laugh? An interesting question, in a way, and to hear lines like “I think I just made a happy wee-wee” or “I’m making diarrhea noises in my cup” or to watch apprentice gurus attack one another with urine-soaked mops is to grasp the answer. Please don’t misunderstand: I’m not opposed to infantile, regressive, scatological humor. Indeed, I consider myself something of a connoisseur. Or maybe a glutton. So it’s not that I object to the idea of, say, witnessing elephants copulate on the ice in the middle of a Stanley Cup hockey match, or seeing a dwarf sent flying over the same ice by the shock of defibrillator paddles. But it will never be enough simply to do such things. They must be done well.
. . . He is supported by a cast that includes Justin Timberlake (as a well-endowed Québécois goalie), Romany Malco (as a hockey star with love trouble) and Jessica Alba, as the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs. A further list — Stephen Colbert! John Oliver of “The Daily Show”! Ben Kingsley! — would only create the misleading impression that there is something worth seeing here. If there is — Did I miss it? Darn! — I’m sure it will show up on YouTube before long. In the meantime talk amongst yourselves.
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