The Love Guru is a 2008 comedy film, directed by Marco Schnabel and starring Mike Myers and Jessica Alba along with Romany Malco and Justin Timberlake. In addition to starring in the film, Myers wrote The Love Guru with Graham Gordy and produced it with Gary Barber. The film was released by Paramount Pictures on 20 June 2008 and was rated PG-13. The film was released on 1 August in the United Kingdom and was rated 12A. It was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on 16 September. The Love Guru was a critical and commercial failure and was the winner of three Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture.

Plot[link]

Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), the star player of the Toronto Maple Leafs, is suffering from stress because his wife, Prudence Roanoke (Meagan Good), has left him for Jacques "Le Coq" Grandé (Justin Timberlake) The goaltender of rival team Los Angeles Kings, whose nickname is apparently a nod to being exceedingly well-endowed. The stress causes his hand to shake, which affects his hockey performance. Team owner Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) enlists the support of Guru Maurice Pitka (Mike Myers) to help Darren with his stress so that the team can hopefully break their losing streak.

Cast[link]

• Mike Myers as Guru Maurice Pitka
• Jessica Alba as Jane Bullard
• Romany Malco as Darren Roanoke
• Meagan Good as Prudence Roanoke
• Verne Troyer as Coach Punch Cherkov
• Justin Timberlake as Jacques "Le Coq" Grandé
• Telma Hopkins as Lillian Roanoke
• Manu Narayan as Rajneesh - Pitka's assistant
• John Oliver as Dick Pants
• Ben Kingsley as Guru Tugginmypudha
• Stephen Colbert as Jay Kell
• Jim Gaffigan as Trent Lueders
• Rob Huebel as Bar Patron / Cameo
• Omid Djalili as Guru Satchabigknoba / Gagandeep Singh
• Daniel Tosh as Cowboy Hat
• Saye Yabandeh (uncredited)

As themselves[link]

• Mike Myers
• Mariska Hargitay
• Jessica Simpson
• Kanye West
• Val Kilmer (uncredited)
• Morgan Freeman (voice)
• Rob Blake
• Deepak Chopra

Music[link]

The original score for the film was composed by George S. Clinton, who recorded it with an 80-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony at Warner Bros.^[2]

The song "Dhadak Dhadak" from the 2005 Bollywood film Bunty Aur Babli was used in the trailer.

The songs "9 to 5", "More Than Words", and "The Joker" are all in the movie (performed by Mike Myers and with sitar accompaniment) and on the soundtrack. "Brimful of Asha" was also used in the film.

Promotion[link]

Mike Myers appeared in the seventh season finale of American Idol as his character Pitka, the "spiritual director" of that show. The finalists David Cook and David Archuleta got to visit the Paramount Pictures studio theatre to see The Love Guru a month before its release and then got to meet Myers dressed like Pitka and playing Sitar Hero.

A "Fan Resource Page" at Fox Entertainment's beliefnet.com website^[3] was "created as part of a collaboration between Beliefnet and Paramount Pictures."^[4]

Box-office performance[link]

The film did poorly at the box-office. On its opening weekend, The Love Guru grossed $13.9 million in 3,012 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #4 at the box office.^[1] The opening week numbers fell short of the $20 million range forecast by Hollywood pundits.^[5] The film grossed $32,190,314 in the United States and Canada with only an additional $8.7 million overseas, for a total of $40.8 million worldwide.^[1]

Critical reception[link]

The Love Guru was panned by most critics. As of 8 May 2011, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 15% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 125 reviews; the site's critical consensus states, "The Love Guru features far too many gross-out gags, and too few earned laughs, ranking as one of Mike Myers' poorest outings."^[6] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 24 out of 100, based on 33 reviews.^[7]

Jay Stone of the National Post gave the film one star and said the film "is shockingly crass, sloppy, repetitive and thin." Stone said "Chopra is used almost as a product placement, taking a proud spot alongside a circus, a brand of cinnamon buns, the Leafs and, of course, Mike Myers." Stone also wrote, "the sitar-based versions of pop songs like 9 to 5 are oddly watchable - but mostly the film is 88 minutes of ridiculous sight gags and obscene puns."^[8]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote "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."^[9] Scott also commented that the cameo appearance of actress Mariska Hargitay was anti-climactic. An ongoing gag in the film is the use of "Mariska Hargitay" as a phoney Hindi greeting.^[9]

Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News was disgusted with the film, considering it one of the worst films of at least the past several years, and going so far as to declare it a career-killing movie for Myers.^[10]

[edit] Razzie Awards

Portrayal of Hinduism[link]

Before the film's release, some Hindus expressed unhappiness about how Hindus are portrayed, the disrespect of their culture and the bad impression that it would give those not well exposed to Hinduism, while some gave a cautious welcome, asking other Hindus to look at it as satire and not the truth.^[11] Rajan Zed, a Hindu leader from Nevada, demanded that Paramount Pictures screen the film for members of the Hindu community before its release. Based on the movie's trailer and MySpace page, Zed said The Love Guru "appears to be lampooning Hinduism and Hindus" and uses sacred terms frivolously. He told The Associated Press, "People are not very well-versed in Hinduism, so this might be their only exposure...They will have an image in their minds of stereotypes. They will think most of us are like that."^[12]

Paramount Pictures agreed to provide the Hindu American Foundation an opportunity pre-screen the film as soon as it had a complete work print of the film, but did not do this.^[13] Instead, it requested the Foundation attend a Minneapolis pre-screening the night before the film's release. HAF agreed to view the film to be able to inform the Hindu American community in light of concerned inquiries that were reported to its national headquarters. The reviewers concluded that the film was vulgar and crude but not necessarily anti-Hindu.^[14]

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Love Guru Official Movie Website
• The Love Guru at the Internet Movie Database
• The Love Guru at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Love Guru at Metacritic
• The Love Guru at Box Office Mojo
• Guru Pitka's Book Club "The Love Guru - The Official Book Club"