What’s to Love About “Guru?”

And now…another blog about Batman. No, I’m kidding. I need to shake things up a bit. It’s just hard when there’s so precious little to talk about this summer movie season. Is there a strike going on that I don’t know about? Yeesh. At any rate, “The Love Guru,” which opens Friday, looks like a pile. I guess I’ll lament that for a few paragraphs.

Mike Myers used to be my absolute favorite comedian in the multiverse. I saw both “So I Married an Axe Murderer” and “54″ in the theater. I’ve seen “Wayne’s World” so many times, I not only know every line of dialogue, but every musical cue, sound effect and continuity error. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way…WTF, Mike?! “The Love Guru?” This is your triumphant return to live-action movies after two “Shrek” sequels?

“The Love Guru” looks like something Will Ferrell would’ve turned down; hell, it looks like something Chris Kattan would’ve turned down. I’ve been fairly critical about Ferrell’s output of late — mostly due to its overwhelming sucktitude — but he’s prolific enough that he’ll accidentally wind up in something of quality every now and again. Myers doesn’t work often enough for me to forgive the occasional misfire.

With producer-director Judd Apatow’s army of hilarious misfits like Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Jason Segal cranking out hit R-rated comedies at an overwhelming clip, Mike Myers’ adolescent brand of caca doodoo humor and double-entendre nomenclatures that push the boundaries of a PG-13 rating(!) all seems more than a little stale. He hasn’t grown up in the intervening years, but the genre has. If he’d made more movies, maybe his sensibilities would’ve evolved. But it’s been 6 years since “Goldmember.”

I haven’t even begun to talk about “The Love Guru” trailer — y’know, that miserable bit of plodding nonsense that stole 90 seconds of my life each of the three times I went to see “Iron Man.” “The Love Guru” tries a completely different approach for a trailer about a comedy: it’s absolutely not funny. At all. I would applaud the trailer for its artistic merit if I honestly believed the marketing department was trying something bold, selling a comedy with all the jokes left out of the pre-release materials; I mean, I laughed harder at the trailer for Godard’s “Contempt.” But you and I know that that is not the case here. If there isn’t a single joke in the trailer that comes close to being funny, well, that’s a very strong indication of what you’re in for should you be foolish enough to buy a ticket.

The movie has even angered the Hindu community; imagine having a billion people pissed off at your dumb little movie. I believe they’re most angry with the fact that each time they went to see “Iron Man,” they had to sit through a preview for this bilge like I did. They’ll feel vindicated after it dies at the box office. So when they go see “Iron Man II” in 2010, they won’t have to endure a trailer for “The Love Guru, Too: Shamalamadingdong.” Tee-hee. “Ding-dong.”

Stupid.

-Brad Lohan

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