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Love Guru, The
Paramount Pictures

3.9 based on 33 reviews Read critic reviews How did we calculate this? based on 49 votes Read user comments Rate this movie

• Internet Movie Database
• Official Studio Site

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some comic violence and drug references

Starring Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Ben Kingsley, Meagan Good, John Oliver, Verne Troyer, and Romany Malco

In the comedy The Love Guru, Pitka is an American who was left at the gates of an ashram in India as a child and raised by gurus. He moves back to the U.S. to seek fame and fortune in the world of self-help and spirituality. His unorthodox methods are put to the test when he must settle a rift between Toronto Maple Leafs star hockey player Darren Roanoke and his estranged wife. After the split, Roanoke’s wife starts dating L.A. Kings star Jacques Grande out of revenge, sending her husband into a major professional skid – to the horror of the teams’ owner Jane Bullard and Coach Cherkov. Pitka must return the couple to marital nirvana and get Roanoke back on his game so the team can break the 40-year-old “Bullard Curse” and win the Stanley Cup. (Paramount Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Comedy
WRITTEN BY:	Mike Myers Graham Gordy
DIRECTED BY:	Marco Schnabel
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 16, 2008  Theatrical: June 20, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	88 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

75

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

What links all these characters is Myers's gift for antic, elfin burlesque. He's like a second-best Peter Sellers.

63

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Occasional bursts of comedy keep things from becoming unbearable but whenever Myers tries to get even a little serious or advance the "plot," the desire to take a nap becomes almost overpowering.

60

Film Threat Stina Chyn

To be sure, The Love Guru is incredibly funny. Side-splitting laughter only stops when the movie does, so don't expect it to linger all the way to the parking lot.

58

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

I still kind of find myself admiring the actor, and the film. Love Guru is insane and self-indulgent but also fully committed, and there's a surprising undercurrent of earnestness to its philosophy portions.

50

Time Richard Corliss

The Love Guru is a shambling, hit-or-miss thing, like an old Laurel and Hardy two-reeler. And like the situations those comics often got into, this movie is a fine mess.

50

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Piles dumb gag upon dumb gag - it's like benign pummeling. Occasionally, you just have to laugh.

50

USA Today Claudia Puig

Enraptured by bathroom humor that doesn't even reach sophomoric standards. It's more on the level of preschool.

50

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A disappointment, but it's not a disaster, and that's at least something.

42

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Travis Nichols

If you're a Toronto native or a big-time hockey geek, there are enough little in jokes to probably carry you through the leaden pacing and barrel-scraping gross-out humor, but it's an awfully dull ride for the rest of us.

42

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Newcomers to the Mike Myers experience will leave this love train early.

40

Los Angeles Times Jan Stuart

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.

40

Variety Brian Lowry

So relentlessly juvenile as to merit a new twist on the PG-13 rating -- one that strongly cautions not only those under 13 but anyone much above it, too.

38

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The Love Guru”does not bring out Myer's best, and aside from a deft early Bollywood parody, there’s nothing visually to help the fun along.

33

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Myers combines his love of references, silly names, and mindless repetition by having his guru use "Mariska Hargitay" as a greeting/mantra. The first time it's employed, it's merely unfunny; by the 13th or 40th time, it's almost hypnotic in its awfulness.

33

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Myers is trying for another of his endearingly hormonal imp-egomaniacs, but hidden behind a wavy beard, a wax-curled mustache, and an astoundingly ugly squashed fake nose, he's a little too grotesque.

30

Washington Post John Anderson

The results are a wheezy, tired attempt to milk more laughs out of the '60s, by doing exactly what "Austin Powers" did.

30

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Not only does the film stumble badly from one skit to another, the skits themselves have too much dead air.

30

Village Voice Ella Taylor

Now and again some pungent writing leaks through to poke fun at the excruciating banality of guru wisdom. But mostly it’s dreary dick jokes and elephant poop, slack directing by Marco Schnabel, and, of all fatal errors, Mike Myers, shooting for cuddly.

30

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

This Mike Myers vehicle exemplifies American comedy's continuing slide into infantilism.

25

TV Guide Ken Fox

Adam Sandler can breathe a sigh of relief: Thanks to this crude, bafflingly unfunny comedy from fellow SNL alum Mike Myers, Sandler can rest assured that his "You Don't Mess With The Zohan" won't go down as the worst movie of 2008.

25

New York Post Kyle Smith

The Love Guru is even funnier than "Wayne's World" or "Austin Powers." Not.

25

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Myers has made some funny movies, but this film could have been written on toilet walls by callow adolescents.

25

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The Love Guru is a comedy like the Leafs are a hockey team.

25

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Insulting to anyone with a healthy sense of humor and the simple desire to laugh.

25

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

This is the first time we've seen Myers in the flesh since he committed assault and battery on Dr. Seuss, and I wish the cat had stayed in the hat.

20

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

An atrocious, idiotic 88 minutes of anti-entertainment. To borrow word-shtick from the guru Pitka, it's AWFUL as in, "Anyone Watching Feels, Um, Loser-ish."

20

NPR Bob Mondello

None of them -- not one, not for a moment -- is remotely funny.

20

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

It recycles gags from earlier and better Myers movies and hopes that the audience won't notice because they're too busy staring at Timberlake's bursting Speedo.

12

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Ninety minutes pass like an eternity. Verdict: Down for the count.

10

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Offensive to Hindus. Never mind the Hindus; The Love Guru is offensive to pretty much anyone with a brain.

0

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The Love Guru is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again.

0

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The road taken by The Love Guru could hardly be lower, and leads nowhere.

0

Slate Dana Stevens

This tale of a guru who brings joy to all who meet him is the most joy-draining 88 minutes I've ever spent outside a hospital waiting room.

The average user rating for this movie is 3.9 (out of 10) based on 49 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Tim D. gave it a0:
this has to be without a doubt one of the lamest, least funny movies that has ever been produced. I can usually tell when a movie really sucks when the only review on the box is by some obscure critic, like the jackass from KGUN channel 9 who reviewed this. I am a huge Mike Myers fan, but I would really like to get my rental fee back and my two hours. I will watch anything with Jessica Alba in, but even she couldn't help this Austin Powers remake. I hope Myers isn't falling into that "self serving" mode that destroys a lot of good comics. We did not laugh one time....even the outtakes were abysmal. Please do not make a sequel to this cinematic boil!

Jay H. gave it a3:
Insultingly stupid, embarrassingly bad jokes sometimes. The occasional guest star appearances is amusing, but the movie is just dreadful and badly written.

aa m gave it a2:
This movie was pretty damn bad. and i'm sorry but anyone who gives it a 10 really has to find out what real comedy is. mike myers making poop noises and jokes and his erection is not really funny. if you give it a 10, go watch disaster movie maybe you will like that as well.

Joel M. gave it a7:
This movie was better then what others are saying. Its not as good as his other movies but still worth seeing.

Gab B. gave it a2:
I walked into the theater with friends expecting a dumb yet funny film, then wished I was alone and could leave. There's a problem when so much of your jokes are based around the idea that the joke was not funny...anyway...

Mark B. gave it a2:
It's hard to pinpoint exactly when it was that Mike Myers went over to the dark side, but it happened long before The Cat in the Hat. Most likely it occurred during the first 10 minutes of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, when Myers, wanting to make his shagadelic superspy a free agent again, betrays Elizabeth Hurley, the surprisingly believable (and endearing) romantic interest from the original AP: International Man of Mystery, as well as all sense of continuity and logic by writing Hurley out of the series permanently, in just about the laziest and most perfunctory way possible. (Uh, what evidence was there in the original that Mimi Rogers gave birth to a fembot?) This marked the complete sacrifice of the sweetness and heart in Myers' movies in favor of increasingly gross and juvenile gags replete with Myers replacing wit with elaborate makeup stunts that don't exactly cause Rick Baker too many sleepless nights. In short, while Man of Mystery was filled with Myers' affection for James Bond, Matt Helm, Derek Flint, Burt Bachrach and 1960s British pop culture, the two sequels feature Myers' affection for nobody and nothing save Myers. Austin Powers is gone, baby, gone, but Myers' self-indulgent egomania lives on in the relentlessly puerile and painful The Love Guru, the least of whose sins is Myers' refusal to make his central character (an Indian spiritual teacher who contradicts his philosophies by being obsessed with materialism and one-upping Deepak Chopra) an object of even the most obvious satire; such is Myers' preening desire to have the audience love him, which results in one of the most preening, obnoxiously camera-hogging performances in recent movie history. ("Couldn't you just eat me up?" Myers asks. "Yes, and then puke you right back out," we reply.) The jokes themselves are so endlessly, assaultively crass and prepubescent (which can be forgivable, if they're funny) that even Myers' fellow Canadians Terrence and Philip would launch a protest campaign. Marco Schnabel's direction is so amateurish that viewers really come to appreciate Jay Roach's expert staging of even the flimsiest material in the Powers trilogy. Concerning the performances, when JESSICA ALBA comes across the best in a movie, you know it's in trouble; she's no actress by anybody's standards (except maybe her immediate family's) but as the unlucky owner of a hockey team whose star player is counseled by the hero, Alba is certainly pleasant, natural, and has an extremely winning smile--fortunately, due to Schnabel's ping-pong camera placement in her scenes with Myers, you at least get to see it exactly 50% of the time! Alba's costars don't come across quite so well, to say the least; as Myers' cross-eyed mentor, Sir Ben Kingsley (The Wackness) not only puts Sir Laurence Olivier's late career Polaroid commercials and The Jazz Singer in their proper perspective, but proves that it's possible to sink lower in one's career than working for director Uwe Boll. Stephen Colbert, playing a drug-addled sportscaster, cause moviegoers to seriously question the intelligence, slyness and wit he regularly brings to Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. Fortunately for Colbert, however, The Love Guru deservedly had very few moviegoers in attendance, so Colbert's reputation remains intact!

J C gave it a10:
This movie made me laugh so many times!

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