BEHOLD Mike Myers.
As Guru Pitka, a self-styled Deepak Chopra wannabe whose every utterance has been pre-packaged and trademarked, he glowers from behind a flowing Rasputin beard, waxed curlicue mustache and eyebrows that arch and swoop like a roller coaster. He's a one-man production number: You take him in the way you would, say, the Taj Mahal, or a Steve Wynn hotel lobby.
Early in "The Love Guru," a comedy of low blows and elephantine misfires, a childhood flashback lets us in on the character's origins. The beardless, airbrushed face of a grown-up Myers appears atop the frame of a 12-year-old American boy, who has arrived at an ashram in his Farrah Fawcett T-shirt to study with a cross-eyed mystic (Ben Kingsley, mocking his "Gandhi" moment with sporting good cheer).
The reality belied by this cunning visual trick is quite the opposite of what we are shown. In truth, the Canadian-born Myers is a pubescent kid trapped in the body of a 45-year-old man. Don't be fooled by the kitsch Bollywood veneer. "The Love Guru's" prankster garb is cut from the same brash, developmentally stunted cloth as "Wayne's World" and the "Austin Powers" series.
But by this point, the threads are worse for wear. Written by Myers and Graham Gordy, "The Love Guru" amplifies the performer's phallo-centric fondness for corn dogs, hockey sticks and masturbatory shtick. The ultimate beneficiary of all of this libidinous energy is Jessica Alba, an actor of such, um, particular abilities as to make Pitka's youthful enthusiasm for Fawcett seem high-toned by comparison.
Alba does whatever it is that she does as Jane Bullard, the much put-upon owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. Nothing has gone well for Bullard or her flagging team since the wife of her star player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), ran off with an L.A. Kings goalie, Jacques "Le Coq" Grande (a game Justin Timberlake). As one might surmise from his moniker, Grande is as renowned for his natural endowments as for his supernatural athletic prowess. Timberlake descends to the occasion, affecting a Quebecois accent ("Oo is this in my 'ouse?") as lumpy as his stuffed thong underpants.
Bullard spies her solution in Pitka, who believes he is only one "Oprah" TV appearance away from leaping out of Hollywood-guru status and into the international leagues. If Pitka can successfully deploy his patented self-help homilies to reunite Roanoke with his wife (Meagan Good), he will get his "Oprah" glory and, presumably, a place on the supermarket checkout shelves next to Chopra.
