Back in the spring, advertising for the Mike Myers vehicle, “The Love Guru” was in full effect. If you didn't know that Mike Myers would be invading multiplexes across the country with a new silly accent you just weren't paying attention. Also, if you didn't know that this movie was no doubt going to suck you were an idiot. Former TRS? scribe Morrison Lewis and I, naturally, made a habit of constantly criticizing this movie (I should add that this was after a period where Lewis and others repeatedly harassed me about the movie, knowing that it's very existence was something I found irritating).
Eventually something strange began to happen though. Each of us, on our own accord, began to realize that at some point, we were going to have to see this movie. We didn't necessarily have to see “The Love Guru” in theaters, but we had to see it. As the movie bombed and the months passed leading up to the DVD release I became more and more excited to finally see what would almost certainly be a disaster of a film. It couldn't possibly disappoint. If it was somehow better than what we expected, we would have a pleasant surprise on our hands. If it was as bad as we expected, we would be prophets.
A few Sundays ago we watched The Love Guru.
Call me Nostradamus and call Morrison the Oracle of Fucking Delphi because “The Love Guru” may be the worst movie I have ever seen. It's certainly the worst attempt at a comedy.
So Morrison, our friend Gras, and I sat down to watch “The Love Guru”. Before we started the movie I decided it would be worthwhile to take some notes throughout. After all, I had a Sunday afternoon of football's worth of drinks in me and I wanted to have some clear talking points if I ever got into an argument about the guru, and there was almost no way in Hell I would ever watch this movie twice.
What follows are the notes I took with a few slight alterations so that they make sense. Anything in italics is additional commentary I am adding now.
6 minutes in, one blatantly racist joke, Jessica alba’s name on the screen made us wonder if we’d get to see her boobs.
Wishful thinking regarding the boobs obviously, Love Guru is PG-13. The next day, Morrison raised a good point about Jessica Alba, if she's in a movie there should be no question it's going to be awful.
Jessica Alba films I can come up with off the top of my head:
Good Luck Chuck
Into The Blue
Fantastic Four 1 & 2
watching this movie in a theater would be extremely awkward, considering nobody at all would be caught dead laughing at these “jokes”
14 minutes in, this movie just ripped off a family guy joke (electric factory) wasn’t funny then…
Now that I think about it, when Family Guy made fun of those Electric Factory segments with the silhouettes making compound words it was a little funny. When Mike Myers rips off Family Guy though, not so much...
in regards to an awful poop joke Gras: Artie Lange wrote a better movie than this.
That movie is Beer League, never saw it but I'd wager anything it's funnier than “The Love Guru”
20 minutes in, we are discussing worst movies we’ve ever seen, Battlefield Earth and Street Fighter are better, we get to quote Street Fighter AWESOME
That's the Jean Claude Van Damme/Raul Julia Street Fighter btdubs, great movie.
(the following quote is best read in your best Jean Claude Van Damme voice)
Colonel William F. Guile: [solemnly] Troopers, I just received new orders. Our superiors say the war is cancelled. We can all go home. Bison is getting paid off for his crimes, and our friends who have died here will have died for nothing. But, we can all go home. Meanwhile, ideals like peace, freedom, and justice, they get packed up. But, we can all go home.
[angrily]
Colonel William F. Guile: Well, I'm not going home. I'm gonna get on my boat, and I'm going up river, and I'm going to kick that son of a bitch Bison's ass so hard that the next Bison wannabe is gonna feel it! Now, who wants to go home... and who wants to go with me?
[the troopers cheer]
whats wrong with sharkskin
more like gayskin WHAT??????
I wish I remembered the context of this joke but it's escaping me at the moment. I do know that is an actual exchange in the movie though, I think it speaks for itself.
37% of this movie’s jokes are based on acrostic poems, the ones you write in 2nd/3rd grade
I did consult Morrison and Gras before coming up with the 37% figure FYI.
43 minutes in, we have our second truly racist joke of the movie (gospel dancing scene)
the aunt from family matters is playing romany malco’s mom, awesome?
It was good to see that Aunt Rachel is keeping busy, one of the highlights of the movie. Also, Romany Malco is the actor who plays hockey player Darren Roanoke in the film. If you haven't Googled him yet, he's the black guy from 40 Year Old Virgin and Conrad on Weeds.
Garcia correctly identified a diarrhea joke, 200 points!
Don’t know what I was talking about here, let’s move on.
Romany Malco eating chicken wings, pointed out, 3rd racist joke
There were likely more racist jokes by this point, just so you know.
48 minutes in: Me: they really made this movie huh?
Gras: this is the worst movie I've ever seen
50 minutes in: “joke” based entirely on stupid hairdo for mike myers and cover of more than words…awful
51 minutes in: movie goes for easy, alley oop lighter joke during more than words
Following a sing along to Extreme’s “More Than Words” a bunch of people raise up their lighters. I’m pretty sure there could not possibly be a more predictable joke. I would think it’s safe to say that Mike Myers isn’t even trying at this point, but it’s really really hard to tell.
53 minutes in: 8 consecutive testicle jokes, none of which are funny, testicle jokes are extremely easy
got more laughs criticizing those testicle jokes than the entire movie has gotten thus far
Not even slightly exaggerating here, eight consecutive testicle jokes. That may not seem like a lot, but trust me, it’s a lot.
still no sign of alba’s naked breasts
I would say I come up with about seven new uses for a time machine each day of my life. Today’s third use would be to go back in time and tell myself at this point in the movie that her breasts are not coming and I should just turn it off. Of course if I did that I wouldn’t get to see the movie’s thrilling climax…
verne troyer (mini me ) just asked what the capital of
He said
timberlake’s character is probably gay, which I expected about an hour ago. Also, I called the celine dion cameo before the movie even started, well, not really, but close enough.
I believe I may have made a comment about Celine Dion showing up early on in the movie, hence my close enough comment. Also, I’m not sure if JT’s character being gay is supposed to be a twist or not. It’s telegraphed pretty blatantly so that may have been the point. Regardless, I couldn’t be less interested in going back and verifying this.
cornershop’s brimful of asha serves as the soundtrack to the maple leafs game’s 4 and 5 comebacks MAJOR PLUS
The only good thing that came out of this movie (besides greeting people by putting my hands together, bowing, saying “Mariska Hartigay”, and seeing the looks I get) was how it rejuvenated my interest in this song/album. I was inspired to upload this album to my iPod and as a result this song got a lot of play in the following couple weeks.
UNNECESSARY PLOT MECHANISM? (suitcase)
A suitcase comes into play late in the movie. I took a wild guess and assumed it would be entirely unnecessary to the plot. It was.
70 minutes in, another racist joke regarding outsourcing and Indian people taking said jobs, dell computers
This might have been the only sign in the entire movie that Mike Myers is aware that it’s 2008.
missed a major plot point regarding alba making a move on myers and myers denying her due to some chastity belt bullshit
You have to love a good chastity belt joke. I guess Mike Myers has seen Robin Hood: Men In Tights. It was released in 1993 after all.
just realized verne troyer (mini me) is supposed to be the coach of the maple leafs, whoops
PREDICTABLE MIDGET JOKE SAVES THE DAY?!!!
Don’t remember the specifics of this joke but I assure you it wasn’t funny.
Nope, elephant looks like it will save the day.
Elephants are banging on the other end of the ice to distract romany malco, (it’s part of an acrostic poem)!
It makes perfect sense that the climax of the movie would somewhat revolve around an acrostic poem.
Colbert just made a post-ejaculation joke, should be funny, isn’t..
Steven Colbert was one of, if not the most disappointing parts about the whole movie. He’s a pretty funny guy generally and you’d think he’d be able to slip at least one or two good lines in there. Sadly this is not the case. His jokes flop just as bad as any others.
ROMANY MALCO SCORES!!!! UNBELIEVABLE! THE
MIKE MYERS AND KANYE WEST APPEAR IN THE MOVIE! MYERS HITS THE UNDER ON HOW MANY CHARACTERS HE WILL PLAY IN THIS MOVIE.
What I mean here is that Mike Myers plays himself. He is sitting next to Kanye at Game 7 of the
Deepak chopra cameo, that must’ve been expensive.
Yep, that was probably most of the budget actually. I’ve gotten to the point here where I can’t even tell if I’m being sarcastic or not, time to wrap this up. Hopefully, this movie ends soon.
Please let this movie be over, at 1 hour and 20.
…almost there…
Awful rendition of steve miller band’s the joker closes out the movie, ouch.
Blatantly stealing a page out of Judd Apatow’s playbook here. Sorry Mike, we’ve all seen The 40 Year Old Virgin, many of us multiple times. It’s also about 40.000 times funnier than The Love Guru by the way.
Gras: that was absolutely the worst movie I’ve ever seen in history, and I’ve seen a lot of movies.
Morrison: *laughs* I’m speechless, it’s just…I never thought that they could, there would be a comedy…they couldn’t make anyone come remotely close to laughter. Mike Myers should be shot.
In case you think that we were biased or went into the movie expecting it to be awful and ended up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy I would like to end with a few notes about the movie from other sources:
-The Love Guru has an IMDB user rating of 3.8 out of 10, which is absolutely atrocious, especially when you consider how many people out there have bad taste in movies.
-The Love Guru has a Metacritic score of 24 (generally negative reviews) with its highest score being a 75 from The Christian Science Review.
-Metacritic attributes three zeros to The Love Guru, from Slate.com, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
Times reviewer A.O. Scott has what may be my favorite quote regarding the movie. I like it partially for its comedic value (it’s funnier than anything in the movie for sure) and partially for its veracity. I also think it’s a good note to go out on.
“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.”
-A.O. Scott 6/20/2008
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