The Love Guru (2008) Review: Ensemble Problems

Mike Meyers was once unstoppable at the movie theaters whether it was Austin Powers, Wayne's World, or Shrek. When you look at how quickly both audiences and critics passed over The Love Guru so quickly, however, it's pretty clear that the Mike Meyers brand of comedy isn't what it once was. I'm not sure whether the cause is one too many Shreks, the stinging failure of the Cat in the Hat, or maybe his being eclipsed by Will Ferrell and the brat pack, but that's just the way popularity works in Hollywood.

Having had the benefit (or the misfortune, if you look at it that way) of watching it after every other critic has already slammed it, I will go on record as saying that the movie isn't that bad. The basic premise, revolving around the quest of an overly commercialized self-help guru to become famous enough to be a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show through curing a star hockey player of his lovesickness, is one with potential. It's hard to say whether Mike Meyers' comic creation of Guru Pitka even has enough steam to have lasted multiple sketches as a popular character of SNL. His giggly demeanor can be kind of amusing, and his system of acronyms for everything and series of book titles that fit conviniently into conversation are funny in the same way that Austin Powers' non-stop barrage of double entendres are: They wear you down until you're consumed with silliness.

One thing that that is certain is that on Saturday Night Live, Meyers' old breeding ground, he would have had enough help to lift his character off the ground. Meyers doesn't really have any all-stars in his ensemble who can do that. Romany Malco (Weeds, Baby Mama) as the star hockey player of the Toronto Maple Leafs seems largely unaware that he's in a comedy and does little to play off Meyers' persona. Aside from being a black eubonic-speaking hockey player, a sight gag only good the first time you see him, there's nothing he really adds to the humor of the script nor does he do much as a straight man (which dimply requires him to react to Meyers). Justin Timberlake has had his moments on SNL but that was mostly as a result of good writers and the fact that as a pop star he had low expectations. It was a little much to expect him to bring a lot to the table as the second or third-billed star of the film (Did anyone think that him singing Celine Dion or talking about a Quebec Pizza were really that funny?). Verne Troyer is probably in the cast because inserting midget jokes seems to be Mike Meyers' go-to solution for not being able to think of anything funny to write. Jessica Alba is obviously ok as eye candy but someone who can play the leading lady with a little bit more of a tounge-in-cheek angle could have helped. Ben Kingsley was funnier than I expected but what was I expecting of Ben Kingsley to begin with? So in the end, Meyers surrounded himself with friends and novelty items (he became friends with Timberlake from the Shrek movies, for example) and that reeks of just a hint of vanity in thinking he could carry the movie by himself. The only solid role player in the film was John Oliver who's dry wit actually made him quite good as a straight man.

Fantastic Four Review (2007)

3 Stars:

If the critics had their way, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer would never have been made. They pretty much unanimously bashed the first Fantastic Four film, yet the film went onto a very respectable 56 million dollars opening weekend en route to a 154 million dollars overall.

I haven't yet seen the first film but if it's anything like the sequel, it isn't too hard to see why critics might feel like this franchise is a second-tier version of X-Men or Spiderman. The special effects can be pretty impressive at times. The London Eye sequence, for example, and the airborne battles are great set pieces. If I hadn't been introduced to Google Earth in the last couple of years, I would have been blown away by the scene where the Human Torch first chases after the Silver Surfer where the frame zooms out of Manhattan to a satellite photo of the Eastern seaboard as a flaming red speck and a silver fly across it. The problem, however, is that the special effects and the world they're set in do not seem well thought-out. Having the Human Torch and Silver Surfer bounce around from New York to Washington D.C. to outer space and Cairo without much second thought, almost feels like something out of a ripe-for-parody 1950's B movie.

That's the case for a lot of this movie: a villain with the name Dr. Von Doom (could they have been any less subtle?), this general blasé feeling by every character in the film about the world ending, etc. Take a film like "Independence Day" to see a somewhat more grandiose vision of our world as it faces a doomsday scenario. In "The Fantastic Four," Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) massages her husband's shoulders as he's being a work-a-haulic and says, "Relax, it's not like the whole weight of the world is on you." Actually, that's kind of EXACTLY WHAT IT IS. Batman is a superhero franchise that's set in "Gotham" and with it, this dark otherworldly atmosphere and Superman weaves together the world of the mundane in Manhattan with extraordinary abilities of Spiderman and his villainous counterparts. On the contrary, Fantastic Four, just appears set in Manhattan out of a lack of anywhere better to film it in. In short, Fantastic Four doesn't feel like a fully realized superhero film in tone.

What makes up for it, in part, is a certain kind of camaraderie between the characters. Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) and Ben Grimm (Michael Chilkis) both are characters imbued with a sense of humor and form a sort of Abbott and Costello chemistry. Besides just being eye candy, Sue (Jessica Alba) brings a sort of feminine balance to the group. Reed (Ioan Gruffudd) is the actual superhero of the group: the equivalent of Peter Parker in Spiderman or Wolverine in the X-Men series. Much of the drama centers around the choices he makes. When you see these four in interviews or press conferences, there's a chemistry between them all that makes them that much more appealing on screen.