By John Anderson
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, June 19, 2008

Mike Myers isn't the Antichrist, exactly. But he is anti-comedy -- if one believes comedy ought to be smart, new, surprising, or, yes, funny. This isn't an accusation. It's been Myers's shtick for a long, long time: Jokes that don't work, bad jokes, lame jokes, jokes that are 40 years old and jokes told by characters we should be feeling sorry for -- the chronically adolescent hero of "Wayne's World," for instance, or the deluded hipster of "Austin Powers." Losers lacking Chaplinesque pathos. Misshapen social cogs without the virtue of an interesting angle.

In short, Mike Myers's oeuvre is about sympathy laughs, although it's not his on-screen persona we're feeling sorry for in "The Love Guru." It is, at long last, Myers himself.

In Guru Pitka, half swami/half con man, he hasn't cooked up a character nearly as memorable as Dr. Evil, Linda (talk amongst yourselves) Richman or -- his best creation -- Shrek. He laughs at his own jokes far more than anyone in the audience ever will. (When a character in the film says, "I've never laughed so hard," someone at my packed screening blurted out "That makes one of us!") The results are a wheezy, tired attempt to milk more laughs out of the '60s, by doing exactly what "Austin Powers" did: collect cultural references from the period, run them through a wringer of self-satisfaction and -- presto change-o! -- cultural satire (although satire seems a strong word for something so insignificant). Call it cultural ridicule, of an era with which Myers is clearly obsessed. Go figure.

It doesn't help that "Get Smart" is out there, too, making its TV ancestor seem like Restoration comedy. Compared with "Love Guru," though, the Steve Carell movie seems like Oscar Wilde. It doesn't help, either, that comedians such as Will Ferrell have co-opted the Myers approach and morphed it into something far more clever. No, "The Love Guru" can barely gasp its way through a (mercifully) short 88 minutes. It's enough to make you long for another "Cat in the Hat."

The story, as it were, involves Pitka's longing to overtake real-life spiritualist Deepak Chopra as top yogi in the New Age celebrity dog pile. Toward this end -- and a shot on "Oprah" (whose host is seen in clips, no doubt having declined the cameo accepted by so many others ) -- Pitka goes to work for Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba). As the already despised owner of the Stanley Cup-less Toronto Maple Leafs, Jane has a problem: Star Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) has lost his wife (Meagan Good) to L.A. Kings star Jacques "Le Coq" Grande (Justin Timberlake). So Darren is in a slump. The playoffs loom. Guru Pitka has to free Darren from the penalty box of cuckoldry.

Myers is Canadian, hence the de rigueur jokes involving hockey. (That Darren is black is a joke about hockey.) The joke about Jacques' physical endowments is apparently a reverse-racial joke, but far less offensive than much of the truly desperate toilet humor sprayed in and around the film.

Besides being, occasionally, just foul, the script by Myers and Graham Gordy is also felonious, stealing punch lines from gags that were old during the Eisenhower administration and weren't that good then. It's either laziness or exhaustion, but whatever the reason, "Love Guru" needs some iron supplements.

The bright spot? Timberlake. His Quebecois, Jacques "Le Coq," might be something of an ethnic joke, but Montreal Canadiens fans will surely find him hilarious. As will everyone. Alba more or less confirms that her looks will always be her strongest suit, playing Jane to a dull shine and, inexplicably, becoming the love interest of the Love Guru. Stephen Colbert is at his worst as a drug-addicted hockey announcer.

Much of "L.G.'s" deficiency lies in the anemic script and hapless direction: Why does Ben Kingsley appear cross-eyed (literally) as Pitka's mentor? The sad thing is, "The Love Guru" will probably make a healthy $20 million, or more, on its opening weekend, before falling like rain in a Bollywood musical. Let us give thanks to Krishna that "Love Guru II" is at this point only a gleam in a studio executive's third eye.

The Love Guru (88 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for crude humor, sexual content, drug references, violence and vulgarity.