Entertainment, Movies - Navy Times

Puckish humor

Movies don’t get much sillier than “The Love Guru,” in which Mike Myers plays an orphaned American child raised in an Indian ashram who grows up to become a self-help guru and gets hired to help the faltering star of the Toronto Maple Leafs find his missing game so the team can win the Stanley Cup.

No, really. You think I could make up something like that?

Humor this juvenile, which sprouts like weeds during the octoplex summer season, clearly doesn’t appeal to everyone. But hey, I’ve seen every Three Stooges short at least 50 times over the past few decades, and they still make me laugh (much to my wife’s utter bewilderment).

If you’re in the same camp — and if you are, you surely know it — the nonstop torrent of puns, double-entendres, sight gags and bodily function jokes unleashed by “The Love Guru” will make your face hurt from laughing.

What’s more, Myers sneaks in a fairly substantive message about the importance of believing in yourself that would make the folks at Disney Studios proud.

He plays Pitka, a renowned spiritual guru and author of such popular books as “If You’re Happy and You Know It, Think Again” and “Does It Hurt When You Do That? Then Don’t Do That.”

But despite his success, Pitka suffers from an inferiority complex regarding his childhood pal Deepak Chopra, with whom he studied under their severely cross-eyed teacher (Sir Ben Kingsley, showing a heretofore well-hidden flair for the absurd).

Pitka’s dream is to validate himself by becoming the next Deepak Chopra (followed, of course, by a requisite guest appearance on “Oprah”).

His chance to climb his personal spiritual ladder comes when the owner of the Maple Leafs, Jane Bullard (the criminally gorgeous Jessica Alba), and her hot-tempered coach (Verne “Mini-Me” Troyer) hire Pitka to help their star player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco).

Darren is having a marital rift with his wife, Prudence (Meagan Good), and emotional issues with his overbearing mama (Telma Hopkins), which have combined to send his game AWOL on the eve of the Stanley Cup finals.

To complicate Pitka’s task, Prudence has hooked up with Darren’s archrival, Jacques “Le Coq” Grande (Justin Timberlake, hamming it up and having a blast), the remarkably endowed French-Canadian goalie for the Los Angeles Kings.

Like his former “Saturday Night Live” pal Adam Sandler, Myers is working in a humor vein that is about as low as lowbrow can go. But unlike Sandler, whose stuff can have a hard, and sometimes even mean, edge, Myers always delivers his gags with naughty but good-natured bonhomie that goes far to defuse any offensiveness in the shtick itself.

For stuff as blatantly ridiculous as this, Myers draws some well-known and unexpected names for cameos, including Val Kilmer, Jessica Simpson, Stephen Colbert, Mariska Hargitay (who gets a pretty funny “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” gag) and, of course, Chopra.

It all culminates in a mind-bending, wall-to-wall Bollywood musical finale that you’ll have trouble believing even after you see it.

If you’ve read this far, you know if you’re in the demographic target zone for this flick. But just in case you’re still unsure, here’s an easy litmus test.

Three of Pitka’s major influences on his path to enlightenment are gurus named Satchabignoba, Hathasmalvena and Tugginmypudha.

I laughed — so sue me. If you did, too, you’ll have a good time at “The Love Guru.”

Heads up: Don’t rush out when the final credits roll; there’s one outtake featuring Troyer that will bring down the house.

Rated PG-13, but could easily be an R, for a stream of rudely funny one-liners and sight gags, along with naughty language and drug references. Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@atpco.com.