The Love Guru

Although he has been incredibly popular over the past five years other than voice overs Mike Myers has been away from physical acting since the Cat In The Hat. His much anticipated movie The Love Guru is just around the corner, while in the US the movie was slated quite drastically, will it fare any better when it arrives on UK shores?

 

Although he was born in America, Pika as a child was left with Guru’s to learn about life. As an adult he has become somewhat an Icon, known as the Guru of Love, Guru Pitka (Myers) has fans across the world who will travel from any distance to spend some time with the wisest man on the earth. One such woman is Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) a woman who has travelled from the US with intentions to get a couple back together in order to save a legendary hockey players career (Romany Malco) Darren Ranoake.

 

Personally I believe that the Love Guru will fare better in the UK, its a much more honed sense of humour that the British tend to love while the US audiences just regard as silly. Think about the humour of The Young Ones, Red Dwarf, Peepshow and the IT Crowd and you just might start to get a mental vision of the sort of humour of the movie, a bit silly and incredibly rude; but the rudeness is rather clever for the most part because its very much tongue in cheek , “nudge nudge, you know what I mean? Wink Wink” style of humour; the sort that made the Carry On Movies so successful. This will help to keep the certification of the movie low once it arrives here, and allow those younger viewers the feeling that they are in on a very big joke, one that possibly a lot of their friends might not.

 

I found the movie at times a little bit too silly, sometimes slipping out of the subtle humour and into the all out stupid, one particular line that sticks in my mind “you might be able to get Jack off the elephant, but would you jack off an elephant?” Myers Pitju asks as he laughs behind his hand. There is an awful lot of the sort of humour we last saw in Waynes World, but much more up front and brash.

 

Ben Kingsley enjoys his transition in acting to who knows where, I last saw Kingsley fighting with dolls in a rubbish truck in the movie War Inc. and now here he plays Guru Tugginmypudha (Get it?) a boss eyed Guru who excels in the wonders of life, but with a mouth like a sewer and the social habits of a wild dog; in one scene he stains tea by pouring it up his nostril so it pours out the other side.

 

Thrust into the mix is Justin Timberlake, who is almost unrecognisable as the ladies man Jaques Grande. Obviously having some humour with his “Trouser snake” real life nickname Timberlakes character is a well endowed man of extremely undesirable proportions. Spending much of the first half of the movie in a pair of skimpy underpants Timberlake half charms/half grosses out both the people he tries to impress and the audience. It’s the arrival of Jaques on the scene that has Roanoke’s career in tatters having stolen his girlfriend.

 

Even though the humour is very much a more English style of gross out, this is still one of those movies that will dramatically divide the audience, while some will admire Myers quick humour and even quicker tongue, others will find this appalling. While there is that other group that will enjoy the movie, but not have the courage to confess.

 

I’m sitting on the fence on this one, the reason to be honest is because while at times I found it incredibly funny, the story was practically nonexistent; skimming over subject matter in favour of laughs. Old jokes about chastity belts, knocks to Austin Powers’ Mini Me (Verne Troyer) height and lack of sexual activity kind of get a bit stale after 30 minutes. There is a lot of new humour though, so it’s not like the movie is just a rehash of Waynes World. Yes I laughed, and at times quite a lot, but I was not so taken with the movie that I’d consider it one of the funniest movies of the year, and the overlying feeling I experienced throughout viewing was that I really did not know for the most part what really was going on, it was often like a lot of knitted together scenes in the sake of humour.

 

The Love Guru is in UK cinemas from the 1^st of August

You Don't Mess With The Zohan

If you enjoyed Ben Stiller in Zoolander then You Don't Mess With The Zohan is bound to be right up your street, and I have to confess it's the first Adam Sandler movie I have enjoyed for a great amount of time.

Zohan (Sandler) is a Mossad agent whose life is spent carrying out assignments for his government, there is no one like, neither has there ever been anyone like Zohan, he is the ultimate killing machine. Sadly for Zohan this is not the life he chooses for himself, he dreams of being a hairdresser feeling he has the special touch. So when an opportunity arises for him to fake his own death and head for America, where he plans to make it as "the" hairdresser. But great popularity causes great attention and it's not long before agents from Zohan's past come searching for him in the present.

Zohan is hardly a movie to cause you to laugh out loud; however what it does do is give you chance to double take a number of times. A little game of keepie ups providing the biggest double take, and the thing that awoke me from my partial slumber, hang on a minute that's not a football they are kicking, it's a cat! Even realising that this is clearly a computer generated effect it's a scene that you cannot help to look at open jawed, and in reflection it's the most memorable image from the whole movie.

Whereas most of Sandlers movies are fairly family friendly this one most certainly is not, it's incredibly crude at times with phenomenal amounts of sexual reference with Zohan's libido being out of control, literally having to have sex with more or less everything with a pulse. There are lots of penis references throughout the movie so much so that you reach a certain level where it becomes well beyond a joke. It's rather like a child that has learnt his/her new vulgar expression, repeatedly ramming it down your throat until you cannot stand anymore.

What I did like about the movie was the fact that a lot of the humour was fairly unique, so many movies just rehash the old humour time and time again the team of Dennis Dugan, Adam Sandler and Robert Smigel have all clearly put their heads together to deliver some new laughs, and to be honest it's most definitely about time.

If you like your humour a little sick this will definitely please you, Zohan can catch fish in his anus, jealous huh? Pubic hair jokes, impotence jokes, lots of vomiting, and some compelling piranha action all are thrown into the mixing pot providing you with the "ugh!" factor, nowfor some that's not a good thing, but for me I love a good laugh at something sick. That being said I can't claim I laughed a great deal, though I did smile. But then again there were so many people around laughing at the bits I never found funny, I kind of felt a bit smothered like I shouldn't laugh; as a rank outsider in the review writing world I already feel the pressure and certainly frowned upon, the truth that I'm a sicko could end my career before it starts. . This is definitely a movie I need to watch on DVD so I can really gauge the humour aspect.

The supporting cast are pretty much non-entities John Tuturro stars as The Phantom, Zohan's arch enemy and to be honest I feel like the actor has sold himself out cheap. Zohan has been adraw to the famous with Mariah Carey, John McEnroe, George Takei, Bruce Vilanch, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock and Kevin Nealon all fighting for a little bit of attention. George Takei's cameo being the most amusing especially if you have followed the Star Trek actor's recent personal life.

You Don't Mess With The Zohan over compensates with the comedy, and lets the actual plot sit on the back burner there really is very little to the movie, but if you compare it to Sandler's output over the past five years it is by far the best movie in that time. An added bonus of the movie is that it does not go over the top on the love angle either, while Zohan has a woman in his sights it's a very small part of the movie.

I look forward to seeing the DVD of this over the next couple of months so I can assess the movie properly having had time to give it my full attention, but for now one thing is for sure it's bound to be a hit.