The Love Guru

Starring Mike Myers Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Verne Troyer and Ben Kingsley
Screenplay by Mike Myers & Graham Gordy
Directed by Marco Schnabel
website: www.LoveGuruMovie.com

IN SHORT: Funny. Very Funny™. [Rated PG-13 for Crude and Sexual Content, Throughout, Language, Some Comic Violence and Drug References. 90 minutes

We bow and bid you a fine mariskahargitay. It's what holy wannabees do. It also gets an audience laughing ten seconds in and doesn't let 'em stop for a whole lot of seconds to come.

Proving that George Harrison had the right idea when he started with that sitar thing is one Maurice Pitka (Mike Myers), an American born in India who, at age twelve is orphaned when his missionary parents uh, do whatever it is missionaries do to make their twelve year old kid an orphan. Maurice wanders into the teaching ashram of Guru Tugginmypudha (Ben Kingsley) alongside one Deepak Chopra and the two begin a long course of training. A rivalry develops. Well, Deepak doesn't care but the Guru Pitka, author of a plentitude of self-help books like "I Know You Are But What Am I" and its forthcoming sequel "What Do I Look Like, Chopped Liver?" is mellow-ly consumed by the drive to be Number One. There's only one person who can make that happen.

Oprah.

But to get to Oprah, the Guru Pitka needs a Big Save. Lucky for him, the shooting star of the Toronto Maple Leafs -- it's a hockey team, Cranky writes snidely as no one in the States gives a damn about professional hockey since the strike a couple of years ago and Canadian Myers wouldn't recognize that -- hold on a sec. Gotta find where I was. Oh, yeah. [sorry MM]

The Maple Leafs' star shooter, Darren "superstar" Roanoke (Romany Malco), has lost his will to score prior to the finals, having discovered his wife Prudence (Meagan Good) in the romantic paws of his rival, the vicious goalie Jacques Grande (Justin Timberlake). "Le Coq" Grande skates for some American team from a city that has no naturally occurring ice. Why he has that nickname, no one seems to figure out. Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, needs a Stanley Cup win to break the team "curse" that has kept them from winning the Stanley Cup for decades. So she hires the Love Guru to "fix" her star so the team has a chance to win Lord Stanley's cup.

Ms. Alba, of course, is drop dead gorgeous. And if there is one thing the Love Guru is, it's . . . OK, we'll spill one joke . . .

We have studied and learned many things in our decades of existence on this planet but have never figured out how the many people locked into chastity belts throughout the centuries, went to the bathroom. The Love Guru, in which said guru is locked into one of those belts at age twelve, doesn't answer the question. It does spend close to 90 minutes making jokes about those bodily functions so thank your lucky stars(tm) that all t hose jokes come with big grins. The film is funny. Make no mistake. Very funny.

And telling you about the chastity belt doesn't wreck the joke that comes at t he very end of the film. So there.

We're filling space folks. Once this film gets rolling -- remember what we wrote about the first few seconds? -- it rarely gives you time to stop laughing. Granted, 98% of the jokes are about bodily functions, but Myers and crew pull it off (sic) with ease. or panache. or something.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Ten Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to The Love Guru , he would have paid . . .

$7.00

Oh, just see it. At least for the bit part by one commentator (Stephen Colbert) and to go nuts trying to remember which member of Monty Python has an uncredited kid in this cast, if nothing else.

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