Love Guru, The [Digital Copy Special Edition]

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Mike Myers struck it rich on "Saturday Night Live" and struck it even richer in the "Austin Powers" and "Shrek" franchises. But that doesn't mean everything he touches turns to gold, as this 2008 comedy, "The Love Guru," demonstrates.

Of course, comedy is a funny thing, and dedicated Mike Myers fans may find "The Love Guru" hilarious. Personally, I apply the term "comedy" loosely to this film, as one may find varying degrees of funniness in it, depending on the individual doing the looking. I smiled once, during a bar-fight scene. The rest of the time I sat stoney-faced, annoyed at the film's constant juvenile toilet humor and general blandness.

It feels as though Myers, co-writer Graham Gordy, and first-time director Marco Schnabel used leftovers from Myers's last "Austin Powers" film, "Goldmember," to fill up most of the flimsy plot of "The Love Guru." Indeed, there isn't so much a plot to "Love Guru" as there is a series of brief skits, some of them no more than a single gag. Worse, almost all of the gags revolve around burps, farts, fart sounds, peeing, defecating, nuts, and wieners. Given the endless grossness in the film, it surprises me that the MPAA gave it a PG-13 rating for what it calls "crude and sexual content." That's putting it mildly, when you consider that two of the film's signature moments involve a "stink mop" fight, the mops soaked in urine, and two elephants copulating. Still, the movie never goes too far into hard profanity, and it never embraces actual sex or nudity. It's mainly little-boy potty humor, which starts out dull and stays that way.

In the film Myers plays the Guru Pitka, a celebrity "self-help spiritualist" and full-time huckster who lives in a Hollywood palace. Now, here's the thing: Myers means for the Pitka character to be totally into himself, convinced his humor is bringing joy to others. Yet it's hard to tell if it's the character or Myers himself who is totally into himself. Myers writes himself into almost every scene, and he punctuates every joke by laughing and winking at it and the audience, as though not only the joke but he were the greatest thing in the world. This kind of self-aggrandizement wears thin fast, whether it's a comic act or not.

Moving on, the plot, what little there is, concerns a professional hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, who have never won a title since the Bullard family bought them in 1967. Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) is the current owner, and everyone in Toronto hates her for her team's lengthy losing streak. She perceives the current problem as being the failure of her star player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), to perform on the ice. It seems he's in a funk because his wife, Prudence (Meagan Good), is having an affair with a rival player, Jacques "Le Coq" Grandé (Justin Timberlake). She likes Grandé because, well, his nickname explains it. So Jane hires Pitka to motivate Roanoke, promising Pitka $2,000,000 if he can get Roanake back together with his wife and help the team win Stanley's Cup; er, the Stanley Cup.

For Pitka, the money isn't important. He's a spiritual man, after all, and not into monetary or worldly things. Except for his palace, his servants, his swimming pool, his extensive wardrobe, etc. No, for Pitka the job is important because it will get him a spot on Oprah Winfrey's show and maybe, just maybe, help him surpass the popularity of Deepak Chopra (who makes a brief cameo late in the film).

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