Mike Myers has a conspiratorial relationship with his followers - they revel in becoming part of his fantasies. In his Austin Powers films, he lived out a dream of burlesquing the Swingin' England era that made him a movie fan. His legions soared into the psychedelic ether with him. He does everything he can in The Love Guru to welcome his base into his latest flight of farce, but it's really more of a plummet.
If anyone should be wary of parodying self-help gurus who teach people how to love themselves, it's Myers, whose movies are overly star-centered even for star vehicles. Actually, all that Myers parodies in The Love Guru is the clumsy cross-cultural style of mass-market yogis: By the end, Deepak Chopra himself appears to give the Love Guru his blessing. As a broad satire of movements and movies that Myers probably treasures more than his audience, the movie is as fangless as it is thankless: a riff on personal empowerment swamped by its own let-it-all-hang-out brand of narcissism. The biggest laughs come from ribald elephant jokes.
As Guru Pitka, a son of dog stylists who became missionaries and left their child orphaned in India, Myers addresses the audience directly, jovially welcoming them into his latest baby-bawdy playground. (Marco Schnabel directed; Myers co-wrote with Graham Gordy and co-produced with Michael DeLuca.)
Ever the shrewd showman, Myers provides droll gimmicks, including a reel-to-reel tape machine that allows him to talk in the perfect voice-over (that is, the voice of Morgan Freeman). Displaying his own new bass tones and East Indian accent, he sings an engaging specialty number over the opening credits - Dolly Parton's "Nine to Five" - accompanying himself on sitar as a Bollywood chorus line of voluptuous house-keepers tidy up his ashram. As comedy insurance, Myers enlists daffy supporting players, such as Ben Kingsley as the guru's guru, and Justin Timberlake as the best-endowed goalie in the National Hockey League, who both take "over the top" to volcanic extremes.
Myers uses an East-West comic smorgasbord to entice viewers into a world where spiritual counselors become rock stars by putting wisdom (or at least tautologies) into acronyms. Guru Pitka's most important acronym is DRAMA, his prescription for spiritual healing; the D stands for "Distraction" and the R for "Regression" - and, unfortunately, that's really as far as Myers gets when it comes to using it in the plot or illustrating it in his moviemaking. In fact, he combines Distraction and Regression, using a slew of gags about bodily functions and organ size to distract viewers from his lack of comic substance and make them regress to the easily excitable state of middle-school locker rooms.
