the Mind’s Chew Toy

Synopsis:

Pitka (Myers), an American raised by gurus in India, comes to the US to get in on the self-help craze. His first challenge: fix the romantic problems between hockey star Darren (Malco) and his wife Prudence (Alba), who recently left Darren for his up-and-coming hockey rival Jacques (Timberlake).

Our Thoughts:

After succeeding in adding two new hilarious characters to moviedom with Wayne Campbell and Austin Powers, Mike Myers is back to try to make it a trifecta with a self-help guru named Pitka in his latest film, The Love Guru. Since he’s already succeeded twice before, this would seem like a breeze for him - but it looks like he may have a few more challenges this time around.

The biggest challenge: ex-boy bander turned wannabe-moviestar Justin Timberlake. While his fellow boy bander rejects have gone on to host throwaway TV shows (”The Singing Bee”) and the like - or merely faded into oblivion - he and fellow ex-boy bander Donnie Wahlberg hit the movie scene, probably after seeing that Marky Mark (Donnie’s younger brother) was able to do so well. While Donnie has shown a bit of his brother’s talent in films like Saw II (2005) and Dreamcatcher (2003), Justin Timberlake so far has been rather unimpressive.

True, we haven’t seen Alpha Dog yet - but based on how bad he was as just an animated voice in Shrek The Third (2007), we haven’t really been jumping at chances to see his other performances either - although he did make quite an impact with his SuperBowl commercial.

Of course, Jessica Alba is around to help Mike Myers convince viewers to stick around - but that didn’t help Good Luck Chuck (2007) - and Dane Cook doesn’t even have the ex-boy band stigma hanging over his head. Thankfully though, Jessica and Mike aren’t alone in helping bringing this movie out of the Timberlake drudges. Myers also reunites with Mini-Me, Verne Troyer, and “The Daily Show”’s John Oliver also puts in an appearance. Hopefully, the 4 of them - and Gandhi himself, Ben Kingsley, can help get viewers to get past the Timberlake curse and actually enjoy the film.

Of course, with the Judd Apatow induced feeding frenzy of lowbrow comedies swamping the scene, it’s going to be hard to toss in another comedy that doesn’t have Apatow’s name attached in some way. But, with Mike Myers, the creator of the Austin Powers character (a seeming forerunner of Apatow’s characters, as Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me - with it’s mix of lowbrow disgusting humor and frequent sexual references, not to mention some actual comedic moments - seems to be Judd Apatow’s role model for comedies), the world may be primed for another Myers character.

Let’s hope the rest of the cast can team up and help keep the Timberlake curse at a minimum, and actually let viewers enjoy Myers’ comedic genius at work once more.

However, with doubts on whether Timberlake will drag the whole thing down into the dumps (despite the best efforts by the rest of the cast) and a question as to whether Myers has one more classic character in him (and if Pitka is that character), we’ll probably wait for the DVD for The Love Guru.