SteveSilver.net

Against Myers

I've been looking forward all week to the "Love Guru" reviews. I had a chance to see it Wednesday, but instead my wife and I stayed home and watched three straight "Homicide" re-runs. Judging from today's reviews, I think we made the right decision:

Dana Stevens:

There are good movies. There are bad movies. There are movies so bad they're good (though, strangely, not the reverse). And once in a while there is a movie so bad that it takes you to a place beyond good and evil and abandons you there, shivering and alone. Watching The Love Guru (Paramount Pictures) is a spiritual experience of a sort, but not the sort that its creator and star, Mike Myers, intended. 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. In the course of those long minutes, Myers leads you on a journey deep inside himself, to the source from whence his comedy springs—and it's about as much fun as a tour of someone's large intestine.

A.O. Scott:

A whole new vocabulary seems to be required. To say that the movie is not funny is merely to affirm the obvious. The word “unfunny” surely applies to Mr. Myers’s obnoxious attempts to find mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, “The Love Guru” is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again.

Roger Ebert:

Myers has made some funny movies, but this film could have been written on toilet walls by callow adolescents. Every reference to a human sex organ or process of defecation is not automatically funny simply because it is naughty, but Myers seems to labor under that delusion. He acts as if he’s getting away with something, but in fact all he’s getting away with is selling tickets to a dreary experience.

Christopher Orr:

Still, The Love Guru is impossible to recommend, not only on its own merits but on the basis of what might follow. After two Wayne's Worlds, three Austin Powerses, and three Shreks, let me suggest we all avoid any behavior that might invite the diminishing returns of Guru 2: Sitar Boogaloo.

Kyle Smith:

'THE Love Guru" is even funnier than "Wayne's World" or "Austin Powers." Not. If this movie were a president, it would be Tedious Roosevelt.

I believe every single one of the above reviews contains some variation on the line "The Mariska Hargitay joke is funny the first time, but not the 50th time."

Posted by Stephen Silver at June 20, 2008 04:42 PM