Rent The Love Guru (2008)

A film so unfunny, badly written & cringe-making, you wonder why no-one put a stop to it - The Love Guru review by TB

After cementing his comedic brilliance & perfect crafting of stories/characters with Austin Powers, as well as voicing Shrek to stratospheric success, Myers then released a new comedy creation: the Guru Pitka. Whilst the Indian guru isn't the most obvious source/inspiration of humour, the genius of comedy is often found in the most unexpected places. As someone who loved Austin Powers & watched the films non-stop as a teenager, I was interested to see what Myers would do. However, I was then put off going to see it after the avalanche of almost uniformly bad reviews. Many years later, I borrowed it & realised that the reviews, even the most excoriating ones, still missed the mark.

This film is just an absolute disaster, failure, shambles & mess all rolled into one. And as I was watching it, I just kept thinking of how badly in so many different ways Myers came out of it. This film looks like the result of what happens when you are the main star/creative force with many previous successes, and now no-one is able to say no to you. This is in many ways as close as it's possible to get to see something which is a total disaster & distillation of rampant egotism. And I'm quite serious about this, this isn't just a manufactured outrage. I genuinely do not know how firstly Myers even got 5 pages into writing the script without taking a step back & going "This is atrocious," through to the producers & director not slamming the brakes on & just saying "Stop!"

The best way to describe this film accurately is just a series of scenes where anything you can imagine which involves toilet humour and/or bodily functions is thrown onto the screen, alongside terrible quips & jokes, hoping something will stick. To be clear, a lot of Myers's humour is around mostly terrible & off-colour jokes, but that within itself was funny because of how it was written & acted. But here, it is barrel-scrapingly painful. Myers mugs away, trying to breathe life into the leaden material, whilst surrounded by costars who you can tell have massively regretted the initial rush to sign on to the film due to Myers's previous track record.

I managed about 20 minutes before turning it off. The bar was set low early on, when we are introduced to Ben Kingsley's character who became blind due to his practice of "self-love," and the camera watching with glee as he pisses into a pot whilst breaking wind... From there, it just nosedived & I very quickly realised that it wasn't going to get better & that any time I spent watching this was a part of my life I would never get back.

The final thing I will say is that I felt quite sad when I did turn it off, because there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Mike Myers is a genius. He earned his stripes doing stand-up, writing material combined with sheer hard graft. And with Austin Powers, he had hit that sweet spot which is so difficult in comedy. But watching The Love Guru, I just felt like I was witnessing a master torch his own career & reputation, aided & abetted by a team who either wouldn't or couldn't say no to him.