This represents the inauspicious return of Mike Myers, who, except for his voice roles in the last two Shrek movies, hasn’t appeared on screen since 2003. It would be nice to report that his semi-parody is a return to form for the star of the Wayne’s World and Austin Powers movies, but it isn’t so.
Myers’s character, the Guru Pitka, comes out of his association with Deepak Chopra, the Indian-born self-help author whom Myers credits for his own spiritual renewal. Thanks to Chopra, Pitka is only the second-biggest Indian self-help guru. (He grew up in an ashram after a being orphaned there.) Myers penned the intro to Chopra’s latest book, and Chopra shows up in the film, so I wouldn’t have expected a piercing satire of the self-help movement. Still, even a gentle parody can be funny, but to use one of the mnemonic devices the guru favors, this is all DRAMA, no comedy. DRAMA of course, stands for “Distraction, Regression, Adjustment, Maturity and Action,” which, if seen as a metaphor for Myers’s career, finds the writer-actor still working on the third stage.
The early scenes establishes Pitka as guru to the stars and has a couple of bits that aren’t awful. In one of several pseudo-Hindi coinages, the guru’s standard greeting to his followers is “Marisha Hargitay,” which may be amusing if you’re familiar with the Law and Order: SVU actress of that name, but definitely won’t be after you hear it a dozen times in the movie. Repetition also drains the humor from the other (very) few decent gags in the movie, which very lightly spoofs celebrity culture. But Hollywood is not the main setting, Toronto is. Pitka has been called into service to by the Maple Leafs hockey team, whose Stanley Cup chances are threatened by the poor play of its slumping, emotionally addled star.
As much as I appreciated Myers’s nod to his Canadian roots, it is at this point, barely 15 minutes into the movie, that it truly misfires. Hereon, the plot is silly and the gags juvenile or puerile, smutty single-entrendres that make Austin Powers—well, at least the first two films—look sophisticated. Along for the ride is Jessica Alba as the team owner, who is not a great actress but can hardly be blamed for the unbelievability of her character’s supposed romance with the guru. The team captain is played by Verne Troyer, Mini-Me from Austin Powers, apparently just so Pitka can throw a gaggle of short jokes in his direction. There is also the “gag” that has now become a signpost for uninspired comedy, the one where a randomly propelled object like, say, a hockey puck hits a character on the head. Myers also has a tendency to mug for the camera, and so he/Pitka laughs more at his own jokes than the audience did.
Via the laugh-challenged trifecta of Austin Powers in Goldmember, View from the Top, and The Cat in the Hat, Myers had arguably eclipsed Chevy Chase’s ex-Saturday Night Live star speed record for going from hip to hopeless, and this only confirms it. In the spirit of the movie itself, I must coin my own memory aid:
Movies
You’ll
End up
Regretting
Seeing™
Sorry, Mike.
IMDB link
viewed 6/21/08
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