- Director:
Marco Schnabel - AMG Rating:
- Genre: Comedy
- Movie Type: Comedy of Manners, Sports Comedy
- Themes: Hockey Players, Hotshots, Crumbling Marriages
- Main Cast: Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Romany Malco, Verne Troyer, Ben Kingsley
- Release Year: 2008
- Run Time: 87 minutes
- MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
Austin Powers trilogy star Mike Myers collaborates with writer Graham Gordy for this comedy concerning a self-help guru named Pitka (Myers) who devotes his life to unknotting the romantic entanglements of troubled couples. As a young child, Pitka is abandoned at the gates of an ashram in India and taken in by kindly gurus. An American by birth, Pitka absorbs the lessons taught to him by his teachers and later returns to the United States to become a leading authority on spirituality and self-help. While Pitka's methods are decidedly unorthodox, they may be the only means of ensuring that the Toronto Maple Leafs win the coveted Stanley Cup. Maple Leafs star Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) is in trouble. His estranged wife has recently begun dating L.A. Kings star Jacques Grande (Justin Timberlake) in a vengeful effort to send her husband's career into a tailspin, and when Roanoke starts to falter on the ice, the whole team starts to suffer. As their visions of leading the Maple Leafs to the Stanley Cup are quickly going up in flames, team owner Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) and Coach Cherkov (Verne Troyer) enlist the aid of the world's best-known relationship expert in restoring the peace between Roanoke and his wife, and getting their team back on track to the championships. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie GuideReview
Mike Myers is willing to do anything to make an audience laugh. Dick jokes, poop jokes, tortured puns, outlandish accents, and stylized make-up, have been in his repertoire since he first became a household name on Saturday Night Live. Since the stereotype goes that comics are by nature needy -- constantly desiring an audience's laughter and approval to fill some emotional void in their lives -- many comedians willing to be this ridiculous come off as pitifully desperate. Myers will forever remain a more interesting figure than many of his peers because, while he's willing to do anything at all for a laugh, he always seems to be able to commit to the jokes so fully that one senses he thinks they are funny.As the Guru Pitka, the world's second most popular self-help advisor, Myers dons a ridiculous thatch of facial hair, an Indian accent that wavers from scene to scene, and a chastity belt. Forever desiring an Oprah appearance so that he may become the next Deepak Chopra, Pitka gets hired by the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs (a competent Jessica Alba) to help the team's star player (an under-utilized Romany Malco) get back together with his wife after their separation sapped him of his hockey skills. The film weaves together a loving parody of self-help lingo and logic (easily the strongest material in the film) with a stream of juvenile humor so consistent that it makes the Austin Powers movies seem like the work of Noël Coward. You will either respond to a grand finale that hinges on elephants having sex on the ice during the Stanley Cup finals or you won't, and the odds of you laughing might hinge mostly on your response to Myers during his entire career. As an actor and writer, Myers seems incapable of doing a joke that he doesn't think is funny, which makes sitting through an unfunny patch with him more tolerable than it might otherwise be.
One of the central lessons learned in The Love Guru is that other people may say bad things about you, but you must never say bad things about yourself. The statement applies to the film as a whole because others might not find it nearly as funny or as profound as Myers does, but the fact is that he "means" every frame of this film -- all the positive messages as well as the midget defribulation -- and that sincerity makes the film somewhat interesting even though it falls short of successful. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
Cast
- Mike Myers - Guru Pitka
- Jessica Alba - Jane Bullard
- Justin Timberlake - Jacques "Le Coq" Grande
- Romany Malco - Darren Roanoke
- Verne Troyer - Coach Cherkov
- Ben Kingsley - Guru Tugginmypudha
