Love Guru, The (Blu-ray)

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Is "The Love Guru" really as bad as I make it sound? Maybe not for everyone. As I said, the supporting players are the best part of it. Alba and Timberlake are especially engaging; Colbert and Gaffigan at least approach comedy; and the Freeman voice-over gag actually works. The rest, and that's mostly Myers, is forgettable.

Video:
I found the standard-definition version of this movie somewhat soft and fuzzy, a condition that Paramount's MPEG-4/AVC, dual-layer BD50 Blu-ray transfer goes a long way to improve. In high def, the overall sharpness of the 2.35:1 ratio picture looks good most of the time, with only occasional lapses into softness. What's more, there is little-to-no grain to speak of, making me think the studio may have applied a degree of filtering to the video. The colors remain bright and vivid, with no blur whatever, and the black levels are solid, making the image quite eye-catching, an entirely appropriate proposition for a lowbrow comedy like this one.

Audio:
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 sound doesn't do too much to justify its name. Since most of the audio consists of dialogue, I could not tell much difference between the SD disc's regular Dolby Digital and the BD's TrueHD. Both encodes come across cleanly and quietly, with a well-focused dynamic thrust from time to time. Still, the soundtrack hardly uses the surrounds, save for the most minor musical ambience enhancement, and there isn't much of a frequency range involved. If I had to find a difference between the Dolby Digital and the TrueHD, I'd say maybe the TrueHD displayed a tauter bass, but there is so little to compare, it was hard to tell.

Extras:
Disc one of this two-disc Blu-ray set contains the feature film and the extras, all of them in high def. Things begin with three featurettes: "Mike Myers and The Love Guru" is a ten-minute look inside the film; "One Hellava Elephant" is a five-minute look at the model elephant used in the film; and "Hockey Training for Actors" is an eight-minute look at the instruction the actors took on playing the game. Next, there are eleven deleted and extended scenes, including an alternate ending, totaling about thirteen minutes. Then there's "Back in the Booth with Jay and Trent," about five more minutes with the goofy sports announcers; and, finally, about four minutes of bloopers and ten minutes of outtakes.

Things wrap up with twenty scene selections, along with bookmarks; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Disc two contains a standard-definition digital copy of the film for PC's, Mac's, iPods, iPhones, and other compatible devices.

Parting Shots:
For months before this picture opened, Hindu groups were protesting it and urging boycotts of it. Now that I've seen it, I can begin to see their point. Not only might the movie offend Hindus, it might offend anyone with good taste. As a critic, I'd urge a boycott on the grounds the movie is a waste of time and talent. "The Love Guru" is fairly mindless stuff that may appeal to die-hard Myers fans or equally die-hard Blu-ray enthusiasts.

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