Guess I’ll Skip “The Love Guru”
The Love Guru just might be one of the worst movies ever, apparently. I thought that the Buffalo News’ Jeff Simon must have had a wonderful time writing this:
It’s crude, crass, stupid and ugly to look at, besides. Not only that, it sounded awful and its mother dressed it funny.
Myers plays Guru Pitka, a freelance, mass-market spiritual adviser who’s sick of being No. 2 to Deepak Chopra. Why can’t he get the Oprah gigs? His chance comes when a black hockey star with the Toronto Maple Leafs loses his wife to the goalie of the Los Angeles Kings, a moron with a prodigious sexual endowment that is a legend in the NHL. He’s played by Justin Timberlake, only one of many willing people hoodwinked into being in this rubbish.
The Leafs owner calls in Pitka to cure the team’s star player of his nerves. Buffalo’s recent run of bad luck at the movies (see “Evan Almighty”) continues here when we learn that the hockey player’s mother in “The Love Guru” leads a church choir on a mythical “Tonawanda Street” in Buffalo. (Myers obviously thought “Tonawanda” a funny sounding word, which I suppose it is.)
The cliche about movies like this is that they’re six-minute “Saturday Night Live” skits stretched out to 90 minutes. The truth about this crude and painfully awful innocent torture (the opposite of a guilty pleasure) is that its thin premise wouldn’t have made much of a six-minute bit on SNL either. It’s too specialized and all the professional comedy and vulgarity in the world couldn’t, in the immortal line from the movie “Nothing Sacred,” reach down into the mire and lift it up into the depths of perdition.
Here, nevertheless, is a list of people besides Timberlake who either have major parts or cameos in “The Love Guru”: Jessica Alba, Oprah Winfrey, Jessica Simpson, Stephen Colbert, Jim Gaffigan, Verne Troyer, Val Kilmer, Celine Dion (by voice) and Mariska Hargitay (whose name provides one of the movie’s few smirkworthy jokes, whereupon it is run into the ground).
Remember every one of those names. Optimistic, generous, big-hearted people, all. And all hoping to do a good friendly turn for Myers in a wacky summertime comedy. None of them deserved the result.
Next time you see one of them doing something you’re not mad about, give them a pass. Be as generous to them as they were to Myers here.
They earned some kindness for being associated with “The Love Guru.”
The New York Times:
Which might sum up “The Love Guru” in its entirety but only at the risk of grievously understating the movie’s awfulness. A whole new vocabulary seems to be required. 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.
Somewhere, sitting in a room cluttered with Mr. Pibb cans and half-consumed bags of Funyuns is the adolescent writing staff responsible for The Love Guru.
Myers has made some funny movies, but this film could have been written on toilet walls by callow adolescents. Every reference to a human sex organ or process of defecation is not automatically funny simply because it is naughty, but Myers seems to labor under that delusion. He acts as if he’s getting away with something, but in fact all he’s getting away with is selling tickets to a dreary experience.
bk Says:June 20th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I may be splitting hairs here, but’m pretty sure there is a Tonawanda Street in Buffalo, its up in Black Rock.
Eric P. Says:June 20th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I felt like the commercials for this were something of a public service announcement. It was painfully obvious that this film is shit. After seeing the exceedingly lame commercials, I felt that I had been duly warned.
JR Says:June 20th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Tonawanda St is in Black Rock. Simon is such a sap. Who really reads his reviews anayway?
Terry Says:June 20th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I will wait to see if my teenage sons declare it to be “gay” before I decide….I’d hate a crapper to soil my opinion of the Powers trilogy, which I love….
Eric P. Says:June 20th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
The print ads might show up as:
J. Simon / Bflo News “…Optimistic, generous, big-hearted…”;
NY Times says “… A whole new vocabulary…”.;
Filmcritic.com says “… Funyons!…”;
and Ebert says “…automatically funny… [an] experience…”
hank Says:June 20th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Actually, Tonawanda Street Begins in Black Rock, at Amherst St just after you pass under the RR overpass, heading west towards the river.
Once Tonawanda crosses Hertel Ave, it’s not Black Rock anymore, its Riverside. After Crossing Ontario Street and passing by Riverside Park and crossing Vulcan St, there’s 3 more Blocks of Tonawanda St. in the Town of Tonawanda, before it ends at the fence-line of the Chevrolet Tonawanda Engine Complex.
Do any of you people actually LIVE in Buffalo, or does a refugee from NC have to give you directions?
Michele Johnson Says:June 20th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
The incredible hulk SUCKED too.. Ironman IMHO was ok…Sex in the city ..FABULOUS!
mike Says:June 20th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
wow hank knows streets, he either delivered pizza or drove a cab. Now hank if you could only find your ass with both hands.
JR Says:June 23rd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
The reason Tonawanda st came up is that simon referred to it as mythical. Where it actually exists in this area in not relevent. And there is a T street in Black Rock, no one said it didn’t pass thru other communities. Take a hike Hank.