I suffer through this shit for YOU.
Jun. 20th, 2008 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosI went to see The Love Guru so all of you don't have to.
No, REALLY.
Pity me?
I was going to drag Magic Voice out of retirement and make this a Q&A review, but I couldn't get farther than Magic Voice hearing the title and slamming a fictional door in my face.
Then I thought, "Well, maybe I could do it in script form," but it looked a lot like this:
THE GURU PITKA: Hey, did you hear Verne Troyer's short? Bwahahaha!
ANNOYING RANDOM CAMEO: *makes you weep for many, many people's careers*
THE GURU PITKA: Uh-oh! I think I'm leaking bodily fluids from an embarrassing orifice, and it's hilaaaarious!
That went on for two hours.
Wait, before I go into why this movie scorched my eyeballs with its badness, I want you to understand that this is one of the trailers that came before the movie:
The fact that I did not get up right then and there and run screaming into the much more intelligent atmosphere of, say, The Happening or Get Smart or maybe the men's room, is a goddamn miracle. I should get a Purple Heart. Or a pony. Or a purple pony with a heart. Somebody send me a My Little Pony that's purple and smells like cookies.
Oh, right, the movie.
So, anyway, I finally figured out that probably the best way to slog through this is in list form, because this way I can just go through my notes and write down everything that pissed me off. But first, the good news!
Everything That Was Good About The Love Guru
1. Justin Timberlake as a French-Canadian Celine-Dion-loving hockey goalie with a GINORMOUS cock. Yes, you heard me right. Justin fucking Timberlake gave the best performance. However, this is me being generous, because he would have made for a classic SNL sketch and yet he's in this dreck.
2. The sitar covers of cheesy pop songs from the '70s and '80s. Now I want to hear more sitar covers. However, this is me being generous, because these particular covers are sung by Mike Myers, who possibly should never be allowed near music again.
3. Jessica Alba is smokin' hot in a sari. However, this is me being generous, because Jessica Alba could be hot in a potato sack and a sari's one of the prettiest styles of dress on the planet. So really, there's no way to fuck that up.
Okay, and onto the rest!
Everything That Was Bad About The Love Guru
1. You know that trailer that opens with Mike Myers talking on a voice-over machine? Well, it's not the voice-over guy in the movie. It's Morgan Freeman. Oh, Morgan Freeman. I would have gotten an extra job or two and chipped in if you needed money! Hold on, I'll take a collection ...
2. Hey, guess what? Verne Troyer's SHORT! Hahahahahahaha!
3. So there's this running joke at the beginning of the movie where the Guru Pitka greets his followers by putting his hands together and saying, "Mariska Hargitay." Which, you know, as much as I love Mariska Hargitay, how many people actually know her name? Let me rephrase. How many of the teenage boys who are supposed to find the rest of the movie funny would even know who she is?
Wait, wait, it gets better. Just when they'd said it to the point where I had written, "Mariska Hargitay should sue ... A LOT," in my notes, Mariska Hargitay actually shows up. And proceeds to fawn all over "the Guru Pitka." Oh, Mariska Hargitay.
4. John Oliver plays a character named Dick Pants. Oh, John Oliver. You go back to the set of The Daily Show and you sit there until Jon Stewart can properly punish you!
5. A major plot point involves the Guru Pitka creating a distraction by making two elephants fuck on a hockey rink before the winning shot at the Stanley Cup Finals.
No, I'm not even joking about that.
6. There's a shot at the end during the celebration of the Stanley Cup win where Mike Myers and Kanye West are shown celebrating together in the stands. Which is funny, of course, because Mike Myers is one of the very few people who even remembers he was the one standing next to Kayne Went when he said that George Bush doesn't care about black people.
7. Oh, hey, Verne Troyer's still short! Bwahahahahahahaha!
8. Jessica Alba plays the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Oh, sweetie, you seem like a very nice girl, but no. Just ... just no. It would be one thing if they made you look like a capable individual, but your response to your star player not playing as well because his wife left him for French!Timberlake is, "Hey, let's get that low-rent Deepak Chopra so I can swoon over him!"
9. The character she hires the Guru Pitka to help is a black hockey player. Which I thought was just so they could make the inevitable "Tiger Woods of Hockey" joke, but then later they got to make a crack about his posse obviously not approving his sharkskin suit (which makes him look gay, HAHA!) and then they brought in his mom for tension, because really, what's funnier than the Angry Black Woman stereotype?
10. The Guru Pitka gets into a fist fight with a chicken. No, an actual chicken.
Okay, a rooster. Justin Timberlake's attack rooster. Whatever.
11. You know what I love? At least four jokes about boogers per movie.
12. You know what else I love? At least ten jokes about urine per movie.
13. You know what else I love? At least eight jokes about shit per movie.
14. You know what ELSE I love? If half of ALL of those jokes involve visuals.
15. Verne Troyer's still short! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
16. The Guru Pitka puts his hands on Jessica Simpson and makes her make the O-face. That's really all she's there for.
17. One of the songs the Guru Pitka sings on the sitar is "More Than Words" by Extreme. Like, the whole thing. In my notes, I wrote, "So where's the drummer holding up a lighter?"
Two seconds later, a guy'd we'd never seen before during the movie sporting long hair and a flannel shirt appeared on a nearby footrest holding up a lighter.
18. For a good chunk of the first part of the movie, presumably before he realizes the joke's thin and more than a little moronic, the Guru Pitka makes a habit of just randomly quoting from one of his many, many, MANY books, then presumably whipping them out of thin air so that you can see the "funny" title he's given them.
19. Ben Kingsley -- who you might have seen in the trailer -- plays the Guru Pitka's original guru (who like every guru before him has a thinly veiled penis joke for a name, like a Hindu version of Kammoniwannalaya), who makes his students fights with mops soaked in his own urine. Oh, Ben Kingsley. You have an Oscar, for Pete's sake!
20. The Guru Pitka starts a bar fight, during which he is rather abruptly beaten up by two little girls wearing birthday party hats who appear out of nowhere. Look, just for that, I don't care if Mariska Hargitay doesn't sue him, just as long as the Zucker brothers get to go to his house and kick him in the nuts.
21. Oh! Speaking of nuts, the Guru Pitka's assistant makes some sort of weird doughy thing that looks like a nutsack for a romantic dinner for Jessica Alba and the Guru Pitka. The nutsack jokes proceeds to go on, and on, and ON for a good two and a half to three minutes worth of screentime.
22. At one point the Guru Pitka is fighting over the station on the car radio with the black hockey player and can't change it fast enough when Bohemian Rhapsody comes on. Yeah, that's a brilliant in-joke, Mike Myers. Please to be reminding me of another movie you could have made instead that might actually have been funny.
23. Verne Troyer's still pocket-sized! Bwahahahahaha!
... LAUGH, DAMN IT.
There are probably a lot more things that were painfully awfully bad about the movie. I don't doubt it for a minute. But my brain has begun to perform the requisite amnesia that I'm going to need to go through to sustain my will to live after that crap.
No, REALLY.
Pity me?
I was going to drag Magic Voice out of retirement and make this a Q&A review, but I couldn't get farther than Magic Voice hearing the title and slamming a fictional door in my face.
Then I thought, "Well, maybe I could do it in script form," but it looked a lot like this:
THE GURU PITKA: Hey, did you hear Verne Troyer's short? Bwahahaha!
ANNOYING RANDOM CAMEO: *makes you weep for many, many people's careers*
THE GURU PITKA: Uh-oh! I think I'm leaking bodily fluids from an embarrassing orifice, and it's hilaaaarious!
That went on for two hours.
Wait, before I go into why this movie scorched my eyeballs with its badness, I want you to understand that this is one of the trailers that came before the movie:
The fact that I did not get up right then and there and run screaming into the much more intelligent atmosphere of, say, The Happening or Get Smart or maybe the men's room, is a goddamn miracle. I should get a Purple Heart. Or a pony. Or a purple pony with a heart. Somebody send me a My Little Pony that's purple and smells like cookies.
Oh, right, the movie.
So, anyway, I finally figured out that probably the best way to slog through this is in list form, because this way I can just go through my notes and write down everything that pissed me off. But first, the good news!
1. Justin Timberlake as a French-Canadian Celine-Dion-loving hockey goalie with a GINORMOUS cock. Yes, you heard me right. Justin fucking Timberlake gave the best performance. However, this is me being generous, because he would have made for a classic SNL sketch and yet he's in this dreck.
2. The sitar covers of cheesy pop songs from the '70s and '80s. Now I want to hear more sitar covers. However, this is me being generous, because these particular covers are sung by Mike Myers, who possibly should never be allowed near music again.
3. Jessica Alba is smokin' hot in a sari. However, this is me being generous, because Jessica Alba could be hot in a potato sack and a sari's one of the prettiest styles of dress on the planet. So really, there's no way to fuck that up.
Okay, and onto the rest!
1. You know that trailer that opens with Mike Myers talking on a voice-over machine? Well, it's not the voice-over guy in the movie. It's Morgan Freeman. Oh, Morgan Freeman. I would have gotten an extra job or two and chipped in if you needed money! Hold on, I'll take a collection ...
2. Hey, guess what? Verne Troyer's SHORT! Hahahahahahaha!
3. So there's this running joke at the beginning of the movie where the Guru Pitka greets his followers by putting his hands together and saying, "Mariska Hargitay." Which, you know, as much as I love Mariska Hargitay, how many people actually know her name? Let me rephrase. How many of the teenage boys who are supposed to find the rest of the movie funny would even know who she is?
Wait, wait, it gets better. Just when they'd said it to the point where I had written, "Mariska Hargitay should sue ... A LOT," in my notes, Mariska Hargitay actually shows up. And proceeds to fawn all over "the Guru Pitka." Oh, Mariska Hargitay.
4. John Oliver plays a character named Dick Pants. Oh, John Oliver. You go back to the set of The Daily Show and you sit there until Jon Stewart can properly punish you!
5. A major plot point involves the Guru Pitka creating a distraction by making two elephants fuck on a hockey rink before the winning shot at the Stanley Cup Finals.
No, I'm not even joking about that.
6. There's a shot at the end during the celebration of the Stanley Cup win where Mike Myers and Kanye West are shown celebrating together in the stands. Which is funny, of course, because Mike Myers is one of the very few people who even remembers he was the one standing next to Kayne Went when he said that George Bush doesn't care about black people.
7. Oh, hey, Verne Troyer's still short! Bwahahahahahahaha!
8. Jessica Alba plays the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Oh, sweetie, you seem like a very nice girl, but no. Just ... just no. It would be one thing if they made you look like a capable individual, but your response to your star player not playing as well because his wife left him for French!Timberlake is, "Hey, let's get that low-rent Deepak Chopra so I can swoon over him!"
9. The character she hires the Guru Pitka to help is a black hockey player. Which I thought was just so they could make the inevitable "Tiger Woods of Hockey" joke, but then later they got to make a crack about his posse obviously not approving his sharkskin suit (which makes him look gay, HAHA!) and then they brought in his mom for tension, because really, what's funnier than the Angry Black Woman stereotype?
10. The Guru Pitka gets into a fist fight with a chicken. No, an actual chicken.
Okay, a rooster. Justin Timberlake's attack rooster. Whatever.
11. You know what I love? At least four jokes about boogers per movie.
12. You know what else I love? At least ten jokes about urine per movie.
13. You know what else I love? At least eight jokes about shit per movie.
14. You know what ELSE I love? If half of ALL of those jokes involve visuals.
15. Verne Troyer's still short! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
16. The Guru Pitka puts his hands on Jessica Simpson and makes her make the O-face. That's really all she's there for.
17. One of the songs the Guru Pitka sings on the sitar is "More Than Words" by Extreme. Like, the whole thing. In my notes, I wrote, "So where's the drummer holding up a lighter?"
Two seconds later, a guy'd we'd never seen before during the movie sporting long hair and a flannel shirt appeared on a nearby footrest holding up a lighter.
18. For a good chunk of the first part of the movie, presumably before he realizes the joke's thin and more than a little moronic, the Guru Pitka makes a habit of just randomly quoting from one of his many, many, MANY books, then presumably whipping them out of thin air so that you can see the "funny" title he's given them.
19. Ben Kingsley -- who you might have seen in the trailer -- plays the Guru Pitka's original guru (who like every guru before him has a thinly veiled penis joke for a name, like a Hindu version of Kammoniwannalaya), who makes his students fights with mops soaked in his own urine. Oh, Ben Kingsley. You have an Oscar, for Pete's sake!
20. The Guru Pitka starts a bar fight, during which he is rather abruptly beaten up by two little girls wearing birthday party hats who appear out of nowhere. Look, just for that, I don't care if Mariska Hargitay doesn't sue him, just as long as the Zucker brothers get to go to his house and kick him in the nuts.
21. Oh! Speaking of nuts, the Guru Pitka's assistant makes some sort of weird doughy thing that looks like a nutsack for a romantic dinner for Jessica Alba and the Guru Pitka. The nutsack jokes proceeds to go on, and on, and ON for a good two and a half to three minutes worth of screentime.
22. At one point the Guru Pitka is fighting over the station on the car radio with the black hockey player and can't change it fast enough when Bohemian Rhapsody comes on. Yeah, that's a brilliant in-joke, Mike Myers. Please to be reminding me of another movie you could have made instead that might actually have been funny.
23. Verne Troyer's still pocket-sized! Bwahahahahaha!
... LAUGH, DAMN IT.
There are probably a lot more things that were painfully awfully bad about the movie. I don't doubt it for a minute. But my brain has begun to perform the requisite amnesia that I'm going to need to go through to sustain my will to live after that crap.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 08:44 pm (UTC)(Seriously, though, I cringed through the trailers of this movie and avoided it like the Plague. I don't envy you the brain damage you must've suffered from watching it.)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 08:49 pm (UTC)Or something. Ahem.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 08:51 pm (UTC)I'll admit to laughing at the occasional body fluids joke (come ON, everyone knows Austin Powers is a classic, especially everyone like me who was 17 when it came out), but... yowch.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:08 pm (UTC)I feel it's better this way. *nods solemnly*
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:08 pm (UTC)......
You know what? My kids' dad is going to take them to see this (he hasn't stated this plan, but this is totally going to happen) and then I am going to have to be subjected to quotes from it for the next 3947589307849753 days.
My kids, being adolescent boys, okay, yeah, but bleh.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:14 pm (UTC)*shakes head*
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:17 pm (UTC)Sadly, I almost had some interest in this. It looks like one of Meyers better attempts in years. Which when I think about it is *really* sad. ;)
Mmm, Alba.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:19 pm (UTC)I suddenly want to see Val Kilmer in a Marvel comics adaptation. After all, he was enormously fun in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Seriously, he kinda got screwed with the crappy Schumacher Batman adaptation.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:27 pm (UTC)When you take one for the team, you go all out.
Maybe it should have had Chad Michael Murray?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:30 pm (UTC)... what? I have pretty low standards. I'll admit it. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 09:39 pm (UTC)We saw a trailer for this at the movies and when it finished, my dad said, in his not even close to being quiet voice 'Well that's one piece of CRAP I'll not be wasting money on. I already saw it in 3 Austin Powers movies.'
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 10:02 pm (UTC)Also, is it just me, or would "Meet Dave" actually be good if someone like, say, Will Smith played the title role? *sigh* You know, there was a time when Eddie Murphy was a draw instead of a turn-off...
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 10:02 pm (UTC)