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After a youth spent raised in an ashram under the tutelage of the eccentric Guru Tugginmypudha (Ben Kingsley), the good hearted Pitka (Mike Myers) returns to America to launch a career as a self-help expert. His star quickly rises and our hero finds himself second only to Deepak Chopra in the world of inspirational speakers. A goofy and likeable personality, Pitka has made his fortune with a series of quirky mantras and sayings that speak to the lovelorn and depressed all across America. But the Love Guru receives his greatest challenge yet when Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), the comely owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, recruits Pitka to help her star player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) overcome the heartbreak that has shattered his formidable hockey abilities. Ever since his wife started shacking up with his well endowed rival Jacques “Le Coq” Grande (Justin Timberlake), Roanoke has been a mess on the ice – but the Leafs are in the Stanley Cup and his skills are needed if Bullard is to guide her team to a long overdue championship.

With six years since his last comedy, you’d assume Mike Meyers would be out of touch – or at least I sure did. After all, he has been sitting out a massive seismic shift in mainstream American comedy; Jackass, the frat pack and the current Apatow craze have all come (and in the case of the first two, pretty much gone) since the third Austin Powers film came out in 2002. His earnest and goofy style is basically unheard of in today’s marketplace, replaced by a totally different (and far more mean spirited) brand of humor. But somehow, Myers’ comedy still plays well and gets laughs; it’s not as if he updated his style, but just that his style still works. The audience I saw the film with was consistently laughing, so loud and so hard that they missed several of the rapid fire one liners that Pitka was rattling off. These one liners are the best – and most unexpected - thing about the film. I figured that the now ridiculously wealthy (thanks to a certain animated ogre) Myers would lazily fall back on puns, poop jokes and lame sight gags - which he does, and far too much – but I was also pleasantly surprised to see several glimmers of his sharp wit still as sharp as ever . There are many quotable lines in the film’s brief running time, zingers that will no doubt be parroted by the masses exiting the theater.

But a film being sporadically funny doesn’t necessarily make it good – and as a story, The Love Guru fails miserably. There’s no power to the film that comes from having any kind of interesting arc, and not even much in the way of plot movement at all. Timberlake’s character is supposed to be the villain of the piece, for example, but he’s only onscreen for five or ten minutes total. There is a threadbare story going on here, but it’s blatantly a lame duck set up put in place only to provide the opportunity for Myers to cram in as many jokes as possible. His unique process of fully developing a character before putting him up onscreen – something that worked so well with Austin Powers – seems too obvious and awkward this time around. He came up with an interesting character, but didn’t make the effort to give him a solid narrative and fleshed out world to romp around in.

As a direct result of the limp storyline, even at 88 minutes The Love Guru doesn’t feel too short. It doesn’t drag on, either, but a movie “succeeding” only as a string of jokes that meet with varying degrees of success is not something that anyone involved in the film should be proud of. Surrounding Myers with other funny people – Timberlake, Malco, Jim Gaffigan, John Oliver, Steven Colbert and even Verne Troyer all earn laughs from their roles – helps keep the film afloat, but ultimately this is a shell of a cinematic experience. Though there are admittedly quite a few laugh out loud moments mixed into the lazy writing, the comedic misses (repetitive short jokes, stereotypes, and puns abound) keep this from getting a pass simply because you’re too busy laughing your face off. If there is a bright side, it is that by proving that his style is still relevant, the best thing audiences can get out of The Love Guru is the hope that it gives Myers the confidence and motivation to start pumping out new (and far better) comedies quicker than every third Shrek sequel.

Grade: C

- Jeff Latta