The superstar ambitions of the fictional Pitka can't hold a candle to the self-promotional achievements of the real-life Winfrey, who bestows her presence and implicit seal of approval upon the proceedings. (Winfrey seems to piecemeal out her image to screenwriters with the same indiscriminate fervor with which she doles out free Fords to adoring audience members.) While there is something undoubtedly irresistible about becoming a plot point in your own lifetime, the queen of American middlebrow literacy might want to put on the brakes after "The Love Guru," whose signature moment arrives when a dwarf actor is compelled to belch, pass gas and blow a booger out of his nose in one fell swoop.
As the Maple Leafs' truculent coach Cherkov, the actor in question, Verne Troyer, gets the film's final and funniest words. That they are also of his own spontaneous invention speaks volumes about the shrinking imagination of Myers, who continues to hone his franchise empire on the belief that penis activity and the politically incorrect (bring on the midget jokes and lewd Indian surnames) is the cutting edge, if not the manifest destiny, of screen comedy.
Fortunately for Myers, there are enough 15-minute celebrities in need of an extra minute's extension to go along for the ride; at least four or five of them make unheralded appearances here, along with one or two others of more substantive talent. Far be it for me to spoil the surprise. Oh, what the heck -- Stephen Colbert.
For those unimpressed with cameo turns or impatient with libidinous wordplay, there is a barroom brawl and a joust with urine-drenched mops, high-testosterone special ops who liberate the hero from his zen-like facade and allow him to show us what he's made of. The film's sunniest moments occur whenever song preempts all the fighting and smirking. Myers leads the cast in sitar-accompanied covers of such Bollywood favorites as "9 to 5" and Steve Miller's "The Joker," revealing a glimmer of the cross-cultural romp that could have been.
"The Love Guru" marks the feature directing debut of Marco Schnabel, who, as far as we can make out, is no relation to the man behind "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."
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"The Love Guru." MPAA rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some comic violence and drug references. Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes. In wide release.
