Word: guru
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...That may change this weekend with the debut of The Love Guru, Myers' first time on screen since 2003. The headlines of early reviews are the sort that give publicists migraines: "Sheer Self-Indulgence," "No Enlightenment, Few Laughs," "Lame Self-Help Romp" and "Guru Is Doo-Doo." About the only encouraging words so far are from Indian and Indian-American journalists, who had been primed to hate the movie from advance reports that its treatment of Hindu and Hindu-esque teacher-preachers - especially of the best-selling, evangelistic, Deepak Chopra variety - would be derisory. Those reviewers are saying, basically, that...
...from Adam Sandler's Zohan, another sweet soul with a few personality defects. A North American kid raised in India, Maurice at 13 came under the tutelage of a cross-eyed swami (Ben Kingsley, giving the goose to his Oscar-winning Gandhi). "I want to become a guru so people will like me," young Maurice tells his master, "so I will love myself." I find such self-knowledge, not to mention self-absorption, appealing in the nakedness of its need...
...movie's stabs at wit are not so much sophomoric as freshmanic. In his Indo-American accent, Pitka asks Darren, "What is it you cahn't face?" (cahn't rhyming with hunt - your kids will explain the joke to you). And even at 80 minutes or so, The Love Guru is overly long and repetitious, unable to sustain its comic conceit...
...like parts of The Love Guru because they sometimes take the form of an Indian musical, with Myers' sitar strumming becoming the bass line for the Dolly Parton song 9 to 5 and he and co-star Alba giving their all to a Bollywood-style dance number. I approve of the opening narration in the stately tones of Morgan Freeman, which turns out to be Myers speaking into a "voice-over box" set on the "Morgan Freeman" key. And I'm a big fan of Timberlake's farce skills; he shows here that he has a future in movies...
...much as I'd like to, I cahn't join the chorus of critical contumely. The Love Guru is a shambling, hit-or-miss thing, like an old Laurel and Hardy two-reeler. And like the situations those comics often got into, this movie is a fine mess...