2008 American film
The Love Guru is a 2008 American romantic comedy film directed by Marco Schnabel in his directorial debut, written and produced by Mike Myers, and starring Myers, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Romany Malco, Meagan Good, Verne Troyer, John Oliver, Omid Djalili, and Ben Kingsley. The film was a financial failure, grossing $40 million on a budget of $62 million, and was panned by both critics and audiences. It also won 3 Razzie Awards including Worst Picture.
The Guru Pitka (Mike Myers) is tasked with revitalizing the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. The team has been plagued with losses, and their star player suffers a marital tragedy that throws him off his game. In order for Pitka to become the next Deepak Chopra, he must help the team actualize their potential to win the Stanley Cup.
Plot
Guru Pitka is the self proclaimed "number-two guru in the world", after Deepak Chopra. A flashback shows that Pitka was an orphan, taught by Guru Tugginmypudha. When the twelve-year-old Pitka announces he wants to become a guru so that girls will love him, Tugginmypudha puts a chastity belt on him until he can learn that loving himself is more important than being loved by others. Pitka asks if he can still masturbate but is warned if he attempts to he will become blind with strabismus like Tugginmypudha.
Pitka's dream is to become the number-one guru and appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show. He lives a charmed life with thousands of followers, including the celebrities Jessica Simpson, Val Kilmer and Mariska Hargitay (whose name is used as a faux-Hindi greeting, even to Hargitay herself). Pitka's teachings, which involve simplistic acronyms and plays on words, are displayed in PowerPoint slide shows.
In Canada, Jane Bullard inherits the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, who are on a losing streak. The team's star player, Darren Roanoke, has been playing badly ever since his wife Prudence left him for Los Angeles Kings goaltender Jacques "Lè Coq" Grandé. Jane is a big fan of Pitka's and offers to pay him $2 million to patch up Darren's marriage so that the team can win the Stanley Cup. Pitka's agent tells him that if he succeeds, Oprah will have him on her show. Pitka meets the team coach, Cherkov, who is there with Jane for his seminar, and mocks his dwarfism.
Pitka and Jane bond on the plane ride. Jane became a fan of Pitka's work due to the death of her father. Jane admits she has a crush on him and Pitka asks if she has a husband or a boyfriend, to which she says no. Pitka asks if she is a lesbian, she chuckles but admits to experimenting once in college which causes Pitka to get an erection and his chastity belt loudly clanks. He grimaces in discomfort and crosses his leg over his lap.
Pitka encourages the rival team to beat Darren up during a game to distract him from his distress over his wife's affair. Darren begins to play well but then gets suspended for the next two games after beating up Lè Coq and hitting Coach Cherkov with a hockey puck.
Pitka has dinner with Jane and almost kisses her but his chastity belt clanks again and she leaves feeling rejected.
In revenge for Pitka’s antics Coach Cherkov punches Pitka in the testicles, his chastity belt does not protect his genitals and he groans grabbing his crotch and hunching over. Pitka throws a tantrum over the pain to his testicles.
Dick Pants warns Pitka to hurry up the process or he will lose his spot on Oprah again to Deepak Chopra. Pitka is adamant that Darren is not ready. Pitka and Darren attempt a confrontation, but her invective ends up scaring both of them away. Pitka helps Darren realize that since his mother only showed him love when he succeeded, he had grown to believe Prudence would only love him as long as he won. Pitka then drives himself and Darren to Niagara Falls for a "Heart to Heart".
With time running out, Pitka distracts Lè Coq with his idol, Celine Dion, and then tells Prudence that Darren stood up to his mom, encouraging her to return to her husband. During the lead-up to the final game, Lè Coq, having heard that Darren cannot play with his mother in the audience, gets her to sing the national anthem, causing Darren to flee. At the airport on his way to guest on Oprah, Pitka sees the news on television and defies his agent by going back to help Darren. Pitka reveals to Jane his chastity belt to explain why he pulled away from her, and Jane reveals that she is understanding of his spiritual vow.
After smoothing things over with his mother, Darren recovers until Lè Coq brags that Prudence prefers him in bed. Darren freezes, and Pitka realizes he needs another distraction, which he provides by getting two elephants to have sex in the middle of the rink, in front of the live television audience (which Pitka claimed would distract anybody). Darren wakes up from his stupor and scores the winning goal. After the game, Coach Cherkov apologizes for the groin attack, Pitka offers a hug but as Cherkov obliges he punches him in the face and threatens to beat him up if he ever attacks him again. They then make up and become friends. He then meets Deepak Chopra and decides that he is fine with being the first Guru Pitka instead of the next Deepak Chopra.
Back in India, Tugginmypudha tells Pitka that he has finally learned to love himself and removes Pitka's chastity belt, revealing there was a hook in the back. The film ends with Jane and Pitka dancing together in a Bollywood-style number to a rendition of "The Joker".
Music
The original score for the film was composed by George S. Clinton, who also composed the score for the Austin Powers films, also starring, written and produced by Mike Myers. Clinton recorded it with an eighty-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony at Warner Bros.[2]
The song "Dhadak Dhadak" from the Bollywood film of 2005, Bunty Aur Babli, was used in the trailer.
The songs "9 to 5", "More Than Words", and "The Joker" are all in the film (performed by Myers and with sitar accompaniment) and on the soundtrack. "Brimful of Asha" was also used in the film.
Production
Myers first came up with the idea for Guru Pitka in the mid-90s.[3][4] The character was originally planned for the Austin Powers franchise.[5] Myers began workshopping the character in New York comedy clubs in 2005.[6] He billed these live shows as "An Evening With His Holiness the Guru Pitka".[7] Myers said, "about a third of the audience were friends of mine who would come. A third of the audience would be people that had heard that I was doing it. And a third would be people thinking they were coming to see an actual guru. I did that for a year and I videotaped them and it informed me."[8] Myers wore a prosthetic nose for the character both in the live performances and in the film.[9][10][11]
The Love Guru was in part inspired by Myers' career-long desire to make a hockey movie.[12][13] A fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Myers described the film's plot as wish fulfillment, saying, "I figure the only way that my team will win a Cup is if I write it."[14]
First time director Marco Schnabel had previously worked with Myers as a second unit director on Austin Powers in Goldmember.[15][16] The Love Guru filmed in Toronto in August 2007.[15][17] It was intended to start a franchise.[6][18]
John Oliver made his feature film debut in The Love Guru and was cast due to Myers enjoying The Daily Show.[19][20][21] Samantha Bee filmed a cameo but only makes a silent appearance in the final cut of the film. Dialogue for her character is included in a bonus feature of deleted scenes contained on the film's home media release.[22]
Reception
Box office
The film did poorly at the box office. In 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 behind Get Smart, The Incredible Hulk, and Kung Fu Panda,[1] falling short of the $20 million range forecast by Hollywood pundits.[25] The film grossed $32.2 million in the United States and Canada and an additional $8.7 million overseas, for a total of $40.8 million worldwide, against its $62 million budget.[1] When the film was released in the United Kingdom, it ranked only #8 on the opening weekend.[26]
Critical response
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave The Love Guru an approval rating of 13%, based on 177 reviews, with an average rating of 3.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Love Guru features far too many gross-out gags, and too few earned laughs, ranking as one of Mike Myers' poorest outings."[27] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 24 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[28] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B -" on scale of A to F.[29]
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."[30]
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."[31] Scott also commented that the appearance of actress Mariska Hargitay was anticlimactic. An ongoing gag in the film is the use of "Mariska Hargitay" as a phony Hindi greeting.[31]
Roger Ebert gave the film 1 out of 4 stars, writing, "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."[32]
Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News wrote a highly negative review, saying The Love Guru "isn't merely a bad film, but a painful experience." He considered it one of the worst films of at least the past several years and also declared it might ruin Myers's career.[33]
Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle was one of the few major critics who did not write the film off completely, stating "Mike Myers' new comedy, "The Love Guru," is a disappointment, but it's not a disaster, and that's at least something."[34]
Myers later poked fun at the film's failure in an appearance on the December 20, 2014 episode of Saturday Night Live, where he appeared as Dr. Evil (a character from his far more successful Austin Powers series), giving advice to Sony Pictures on its cancellation of the release of The Interview: "if you really want to put a bomb in a theater, do what I did: put in The Love Guru."[35]
Accolades
Portrayal of Hinduism
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.[36] 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."[37]
Paramount Pictures agreed to provide the Hindu American Foundation an opportunity to pre screen the film as soon as it had a complete work print of the film, but did not do this.[38] 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 American Hindu 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.[39]
