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A Pain in the Ashram

When an actor lands the role he (or she) was born to play, it's magic. No one does Inspector Clouseau like Peter Sellers (sorry, Steve Martin); No one but Ahnuld could have been "The Terminator" (sorry, "Sarah Connor Chronicles"); and let's face it, Keanu had been building up to Neo his whole life. It seems, judging by "The Love Guru", Mike Myers found his role as well. It's Austin Powers.

In "Guru", a half-baked attempt to create a feature film around a riff on Deepak Chopra, Mr. Myers plays Guru Pitka, the "second best guru" in all the world. You can tell he's second best because the newspaper headlines say so. This is a Mike Myers movie, after all (he co-wrote the script with relative newcomer Graham Gordy), so you know going in that the comedy's not going to be of the subtle variety. In fact, "Guru" contains so much genital humor that it makes Adam Sandler's similarly puerile "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" look like high art.

Guru Pitka runs an Ashram where he gives motivational speeches that consist solely of acronyms (BIBLE = Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth) and clever wordplay ("I want you to go from 'Nowhere' to 'Now' 'Here'"). This isn't earth-shattering comedy, but Mr. Myers sells it with his typically infectious mugging. The energetic comedian workshopped the Pitka character in New York City before bringing it to the screen, and it's clear that most of the best material is on display in these early scenes. When the plot kicks in, it's a different story.

Such as it is, the plot revolves around Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), a Toronto Maple Leafs player whose wife (Meagan Good) leaves him for a rival team's goalie, the intimidatingly-named Jacques "Le Coq" Grande. Sigh. Jacques is played by Justin Timberlake with something that I think is a Quebecois accent, but really, what does it matter? When Darren's hockey playing goes south just before the playoffs, the Maple Leafs owner (Jessica Alba, no really) gets the idea to hire the Love Guru to reunite the former lovers.

The above unfolds in the film's first five minutes. The rest of the movie, when it's not doing penis jokes, gets a lot of mileage out of funny-sounding fake Indian names. You know, like Tugginmypudha and Harenmahkeester (get it?). This seems less like an Indian joke than an homage to Wossamatta U from "Rocky and Bullwinkle" in the 60s. There's also one particularly painful dinner sequence, featuring genital-shaped food, that actually made me feel bad for Jessica Alba. Yes, though this actress is single-handedly proving how far you can get in Hollywood on looks alone, she didn't deserve to sit through that scene and then deliver the line, "I haven't laughed like this is a long time".

Not all the gags in "Guru", director Marco Schnabel's feature debut, fall flat. Pitka's mantra ("mariska hargitay") gets a laugh nearly every time; there's a spot-on Bollywood spoof early in the film that could have (dare I say it?) gone on longer; and the flashback sequence of young Pitka, played with Mr. Myers' head CGI'd to a child's body, is so odd it's nearly perfect.

But the problem with the film is its title character. For a while, it's hard not to think of another white-guy-plays-Indian film, 1968's "The Party" (with Peter Sellers as Hrundi V. Bakshi), but the Guru Pitka character simply never quite gels. He laughs, he lisps, he flirts (which is creepy coming from a love guru), but he doesn't amount to a memorable character. Plus, Pitka's shtick veers so close to Austin Powers (and occasionally Dr. Evil) that it makes you reminiscent of those funnier movies. Where "Powers" was a spoof of a genre (it was anchored in Bond but could be extended to action movies generally), Pitka is a spoof of a man. And since Mr. Myers and Dr. Chopra are buddies now, some hero worship shines through. "Guru" also contains not one, not two, but three sitar-based musical numbers - they're not really parodies since they're played basically straight.

Underneath it all, Mr. Myers attempts to inject a real message into the film ("love yourself", etc) and I appreciate the effort. But, like most self-help advice, it isn't the revelation he thinks it is. Most Pixar films do the same with animation, and with far fewer fart jokes.