1 of 2

The Love Guru Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG-13 (for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some comic violence and drug references) Genre: Comedy Theater release: June 20, 2008 by Paramount Pictures Directed by: Marco Schnabel Runtime: 1 hour 27 minutes Cast: Mike Myers (Guru Pitka), Jessica Alba (Jane Bullard), Romany Malco (Darren Roanoke), Justin Timberlake (Jacques Grande), Meagan Good (Prudence Roanoke), Verne Troyer (Coach Cherkov), Ben Kingsley (Guru Tugginmypuddha), Stephen Colbert (Jay Kell), Manu Narayan (Rajneesh), John Oliver (Dick Pants) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Mike Myers has made a career of pushing the limits of the PG-13 rating. For example, the American ratings system currently allows PG-13 films to use the f-word only once, maybe twice, and never in a sexual context; anything beyond that gets the R rating. But in one of the Austin Powers movies, the title character meets a couple of Asian women who seem to be asking him to do something to them and, if he is hearing them correctly, it would seem that they are using the f-word over and over again, and in a definitely sexual way. But then it turns out that they are actually telling him their names, which are spelled just a wee bit differently, so it's all, um, innocent, or something. And so the film remained PG-13 and—since the PG-13 rating is purely advisory and not enforceable—children of all ages could still go to the movie and share a snicker or two over this naughty bit of innuendo.

Mike Myers as Guru Pitka

Myers dishes up more of the same in The Love Guru, his first live-action film since he starred in the seriously ill-advised The Cat in the Hat five years ago. This time, he plays Guru Pitka, an American raised in India who has moved back to the States—to Hollywood, specifically—and become a popular author, speaker and friend to the stars, delivering lectures that substitute trite acronyms and word games like "BIBLE = Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth" and "Intimacy = Into-Me-I-See" for anything of any real spiritual depth. But, as we learn in a flashback, Guru Pitka has been wearing a chastity belt since he was 12 years old, and he cannot take it off and enjoy the love of others until he has first learned how to love himself. So while the guru has built a reputation on boosting the self-esteem of others and on fixing other people's relationships, his brain is essentially stuck in preadolescence—look no further than his obsession with penis jokes throughout the film.

But since Guru Pitka is supposedly an expert on relationships, the central plot of this film—to the extent that it has one—revolves around his efforts to save the marriage of one Darren Roanoke (Baby Mama's Romany Malco), a black hockey player known as "the Tiger Woods of hockey," who has been off his game ever since his wife Prudence (Stomp the Yard's Meagan Good) left him for a goalie on another team, a French-Canadian named Jacques Grande (Justin Timberlake). Jacques, incidentally, has a nickname that is synonymous with rooster—and indeed, his hockey mask bears an image of a rooster and his house is even guarded by a rooster—but of course, that isn't what his nickname refers to. Similarly, the coach who oversees Roanoke's team happens to bear the name Cherkov (Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer). And so it goes.

Jessica Alba as Jane Bullard

At any rate, Guru Pitka's motives in wanting to save the Roanokes' marriage are not entirely pure. First, he has been invited to do so by the owner of Darren's team, a woman named Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), who is convinced that the team cannot win the Stanley Cup without Darren and that Darren cannot win on the ice unless his personal life is straightened out. Second, Guru Pitka has taken the case because he thinks it will boost his chances of winning a guest spot on Oprah's talk show, thus making him a bigger self-help celebrity than Deepak Chopra. So, for a while at least, the health of the Roanokes' marriage is important chiefly because others find it useful—but of course, somewhere along the way, the guru's priorities change.

It is interesting to compare The Love Guru to a film like, say, You Don't Mess with the Zohan. Both films feature Saturday Night Live alumni and a lot of raunchy humor, much of it based on the male sex organ, that could easily have tipped over into R-rated territory. Both films also allow their stars to dwell on issues that matter to them; for Sandler, it is Jewish culture and American politics, while for Myers, it is Canadian culture and Hollywood celebrity. Darren's team, which hasn't won a Stanley Cup in over 40 years, happens to be the Toronto Maple Leafs—or, as my dad used to call them, the Toronto Make-Believes—while Jacques frequently uses a French swear-word that is supposed to be the worst thing you can possibly say in Quebec, or so every child raised in English Canada is told. (That hasn't stopped the film from getting a G rating in Quebec, though.)

next page... |  1 of 2 | last page