Guru Pitka is a less likable version of Austin Powers.

Rating: 2/10 (6 July 2008)

Of all things about this mess of a movie, the most surprising to me was the character of Guru Pitka. I thought he would be a silly character, but one who cared about others. He was surprisingly more crude and horny than Austin Powers, and the character, and Mike Meyers himself, just couldn't stay away from the wiener jokes. I took a count on how many male genital jokes were in this film, and I came up with 39, which means every 2 minutes there was a genital joke, which shows how far Mike Meyers was stretching for a script.
Guru Pitka (Mike Meyers) is a self help guru who focuses mainly on people's love lives, and gives stupid seminars in which he uses mnemonics for his multi-step programs that usually spell out dirty words. Pitka is living in the shadow of a rival guru Deepak Chopra, and more than anything, Pitka wants to get on Oprah so he can become a more respected guru. He tries to help a hockey player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), who's marriage is on the rocks, to get publicity. The manager of the team died a few years back and his daughter Jane (Jessica Alba) is running the team now. Pitka both falls for her and wants to help her self esteem. Bad jokes ensue.
There are so many negatives to this film, and very few positives, but there are positives, and this isn't the worst movie I've ever seen. In fact, this isn't even the worst of the year. Meet the Spartans was worse, and this was a treat compared to that. But nonetheless, I'll start with the negatives here. The characters are just awful. As I've said, Pitka was very unlikable and acted like an annoying 12 year old. Justin Timberlake was obnoxious as a rival hockey player who was dating Darren's wife. Every joke based around him has to do with the size of his privates...funny, huh!? Verne Troyer aka Mini Me plays the Hockey Coach and he was better when he didn't talk much. Steven Colbert is seen throughout as a hockey announcer, and though he can be funny, he needs the right material to play off of, and this is not it. Ben Kingsley plays my favorite character, who's name is so long I don't want to spell it out. He plays Pitka's mentor is flashbacks back in India, and though he's not funny, Kingsley just has a presence that no one else in this sorry picture could even try to emulate. His character is pretty similar to Mike Meyers in View from the Top, so he's really not bringing much new to the table, unfortunately. We also are treated to some really random cameos, like Jessica Simpson, Kanye West, Mariska Hargitay and the very random Val Kilmer. What an eclectic group they have. The direction is okay, but it doesn't really matter, because it's the writing that does this one in. Mike Meyers wanted to play Austin Powers again I guess, so he created an Indian carnation of him that manages to be a lot less funny, more crude, and dare I say, a character that's even more sex starved.
Onto the positives. There were a few moments where I laughed, and they were generally ones after long sustain periods of boredom, and the scenes caught me by surprise because they were mildly amusing. The acting isn't bad, the characters are, so the acting is a positive. I was mildly entertained at moments throughout, but overall this was just a horribly written mess that relied way too little on brain, and way too much on jokes about the male second brain. I found Pitka's appearance on the season finale of American idol funnier than anything in this movie.
My rating: * out of ****. 85 mins. PG-13 for sexual humor, drug use and language