Burn, Baby, Burn

Okay, so here's your second installment of BURN!
This one will focus on Mike Myers's new movie, The Love Guru. It came out this past weekend and was trompled all over by Get Smart in a showdown of the truly horrible summer comedies. I chose The Love Guru to burn instead of Get Smart because of all the love I have for Steve Carell and Anne Hathawy.













First of all, this is one of my all time pet peeves- am I really supposed to believe that this is a real couple??? I get that it's fantasy, but just not for 50% of the viewing audience.


Yeah, this is her real husband, and even though he's not totally in her league looks wise I can def fantasize about doing him.











Now on to the BURN. I really, really enjoyed looking up these review. As usual it's all from the white male perspective bc movie critic is still sort of an old (dorky) boys club, but they had a good time hating on this movie too.
Okay, Roger Ebert, crotchety, but gets a pass for having cancer and loosing his power of speech. Plus he dated Oprah. Here's a good opener from his review in the Chicago Sun Times

Myers has made some funny movies, but this film could have been written on toilet walls by callow adolescents...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...Even his fellow actors seem to realize no one is laughing. That’s impossible, because they can’t hear the audience, but it looks uncannily like they can, and don’t.

Hee, hee, that kind of makes me want to see it.
But then A.O. Scott (who looks exactly like the image you have in your head of a soft, white, mid 40's film reviewer for the NY Times. You can google image search him but they're all glamor shots, so I didn't use one) disabused me of any idea of a 'so bad it's good' Showgirls kind of movie.

...Which might sum up “The Love Guru” in its entirety but only at the risk of grievously understating the movie’s awfulness. A whole new vocabulary seems to be required. To say that the movie is not funny is merely to affirm the obvious...No, “The Love Guru” is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again.

Make's you 'wonder if you'll ever laugh again' Wow, I do not want to be put in that position! NPR's Bob Mondello warns,

Those suckered into seeing this relentless exercise in juvenilia, meanwhile, may well recoil from sports comedies, Bollywood musicals, self-help spiritualists, puns and even characters with beards for the foreseeable future.

My boyfriend has a beard!! There's no way I'm seeing this movie.
So we all know, don't see the Love Guru, no good will come of it, but I couldn't help but save my favorite for last just in case you might be harboring some Wayne's World related sympathy. Here's Dana Stevens on Slate.com.

...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.

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.

(Me: Mike Myers, slightly preferable to being on dialysis)

Some of the lowest moments involve Sir Ben Kingsley...I've read that Kingsley, who was made a knight of the realm in 2001, often alienates the English press by insisting on the usage of his full title, even in casual social situations. If he's that concerned about maintaining his dignity, he might reconsider taking on roles in which people swordfight with mops soaked in their own piss.

Mops soaked in urine, down right Shakespearian.
I am sort of surprised that I found very little mention of how crassly the movie treats little people like Vern 'Mini Me' Troyer or how much backlash there's been from the world's Hindi community. But like I said it's all from the over educated, over 40, white guy perspective.

Related: There's a really interesting article in Entertainment Weekly about how many bridges Myers has burned in Hollywood. If you're like me this comes as a total surprise because you think he is the guy from So I Married an Ax Murderer.

''I honestly root against him.'' Penelope Spheeris, who directed Myers in his first film, the 1992 smash Wayne's World, says she has shared war stories with others who've worked with the actor. ''Maybe he could open, like, a children's hospital to clean up his rep,'' she jokes darkly. ''He's got to do something pretty quick.''

And then she goes on about a screaming fit he threw because there was no margarine on the set. What????? Bonus insight: He's total besties with Deepak Chopra. Sorry I can't go on, my mind is too occupied with being blown.