Myers does it again

Rating: 5/10 (11 July 2008)

I remember when the first Austin Powers movie came out. I was a teenager back then and I just thought the movie was brilliant. I have rewatched it many times. To this day, me and my friends have inside jokes, like Dr Evil's ticks, much like today's kids have Borat. And hey, he was also in the Wayne's World movies and was funny in SNL. He couldn't do any wrong.
However, the sequel was a huge hit and Myers seems to have taken the wrong lesson from that movie's success. The things that made the first Austin Powers movie funny were NOT the fart jokes, they never were. The third movie was a complete disgrace, with Myers trying to imitate Eddie Murphy's bad habit of impersonating many characters and upping the ante with bad taste jokes. Perhaps more alarming was the distinct impression that he was the only one laughing at his jokes, to the point when it just got embarrassing.
Keep in mind that I'm someone who even likes Rob Schneider's comedies (except for The Animal) and virtually every parody movie I can get my hands on - including the equally-hated Meet The Spartans. I have high tolerance towards silly and stupid comedies.
Well, here Myers does it again. Guru "Pitka", his character, is a well-meaning but incompetent spiritual guru who wants to be more famous than Deepak Chopra. The problem is that his incompetence includes his joke-telling skills. You know it. When Myers tells a joke, then there's an uncomfortable moment, and then he explodes into laughter forcing the other person to laugh along so as not to make things even more uncomfortable. It's really telling and ironic that Myers himself did that exact thing as Dr. Evil, but back then it was funny. Now it's not.
Verne Troyer is here but now he's the head coach (!) of The Toronto Maple Leafs. All the main actors are okay, since the plot doesn't demand too much from them, and there are more than a few cameo appearances. However, there were two unexpected surprises: John Oliver of The Daily Show fame as the Guru's "agent" and the now legendary Stephen Colbert - he's hilarious in every scene he's in.
Myers sometimes uses clever inside jokes - some that hockey fans or Canadians will get, some that "Wayne's World" fans will get, and some that are so lame that nobody really gets.
To be fair though, this doesn't deserve the abysmal rating it's getting. There are a few laughs and the sheer absurdity of some scenes is hilarious. Unfortunately, though, the bulk of The Love Guru's jokes really concerns farts and uncomfortable moments.
As a comedy on a lazy day, I give it a 5/10. However I cannot really defend The Love Guru because I think it's time for Myers to stop doing movies like this and be funny again without resorting to lame plots and fart jokes. We've had enough of that.