Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Tonight Jason Freidberg and Aaron Seltzer have something to celebrate. They can now say that they made a movie every bit as good as Mike Myers. You know all those stupid, insipid, IQ 70 mother fuckers who not only paid to see but actually laughed at Meet the Spartans? Well The Love Guru is the movie for their parents. It’s never fun to watch someone commit career suicide, but that’s exactly what this is – a gargantuan dose of cinematic hemlock telling the audience in no uncertain terms that the days of Mike Myers reigning supreme on the comedy scene are over.
This is one of those films that makes you wonder, often aloud, just what the hell these people were thinking. It’s as if Myers finally got sick of everyone asking him when he’d get around to making another live action comedy and decided to show everyone exactly why he hasn’t. This shit is weak, an unspeakably awful trek into a humorless void where each joke is punctuated by nothing but deafening silence. You know that pained awkward quiet that comes accompanied by a low muffled cough somewhere in the back of the auditorium? Yeah. Now imagine that for 90 minutes. If you’re lucky, you might find yourself in a theatre with a cackler, laughing at every third joke while actually slapping their knee and repeating the joke to their friends in the shrill buzzsaw like tone of an untamed harpy. We had one of those. One. And I made sure to sit far enough away so she wouldn’t spill her dribble cup on me. But at least she let me know where some of the jokes were.
Okay, I’m exaggerating. You know exactly where the jokes are in this. They’re kind of hard to miss. Myers wields his humor with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and half the precision, repeatedly bludgeoning the audience with bits over and over again until every member of his camera crew had stopped laughing. Sadly for us, the jokes aren’t nearly as funny when you aren’t in the room. Or on mild sedatives. Like Xylazine. I want very much to say that this isn’t Austin Powers or Shrek or Wayne’s World or How I Married an Axe Murderer. The problem is, it is. It is exactly like all of those films save for one, tiny, insignificant detail. Myers long ago exhausted his supply of jokes to insert into those gags we all know so well.
Take for example his classic “Euphemism stream”, that part of the movie in which he takes a fairly innocuous object, sexualizes it and makes every joke in the book about it. Well, this time he’s run out of things to do that with. So he has to invent an Indian dish which involves two nuts being wrapped in a pastry nutsack before being deep fried. You get it? Nuts. Sack. Genius! He’s one step short of actually whipping them out on screen and doing the gags now. And this is just the beginning. Every midget joke he hasn’t used on Verne Troyer yet finds its place here as does his penchant for spontaneous, needless cameos of people appearing as themselves. I mean, since he walks around greeting everyone with the phrase Mariska Hargitay – you’ll never in a million years guess who shows up.
When I compared this to Meet the Spartans I wasn’t being mean. This really does use a large number of the same techniques. The main difference is that while Friedberg/Seltzer draw their inspiration (if no one finds the use of that word offensive in this situation) from songs, movies and celebrities whose shelf life is rapidly deteriorating, Myers selects his inane, insight-free pop culture references from 15-30 years ago. Watching him play the song 9 to 5 on the Sitar during the opening credits is one thing. But when he painstakingly recreates the music video to More than Words by the long vanished hairband Extreme with the only difference being that he is, yes, playing it on the Sitar…well, you too will wonder what the fuck happened to this guy. Really? Extreme? The last time I watched that video I was fingerbanging my high school sweetheart on the couch in my parents den. How the fuck was that supposed to make me laugh? “OH I REMEMBER THAT VIDEO! AND WOW! THIS LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE IT! BUT WITH A SITAR! THAT’S FUNNY!”
Someone call Larry the Cable Guy and tell him to make room on the bottom of the lowbrow comedy making heap. He’s got company. Fortunately for Myers, I’ve seen Meet the Spartans, Over Her dead Body, The Hottie and the Nottie and Witless Protection. So it isn’t the worst movie I’ve seen all year. But it without a doubt shares their real estate at the bottom of the list.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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