Mike Myers is practically omnipresent on the talk show circuit for Love Guru. I caught him this morning on AMC’s Shootout. Does he really believe in this thing or is it a contractual thing. I have noticed that he makes as many or more references to Shrek as LG (somehow it always comes out that Shrek IV is scheduled for release in '09).
Actors don’t do promotion on talk shows because the “believe” in it. They do it, primarily, because they are contractually obligated to do so. Sometimes they do it because they are paid to do it. Sometimes they do it because they will make more money if the movie is successful.
I think he believes in this thing…it’s really his baby, like Austin Powers. Apparently he was workshopping the character on the sly in New York comedy clubs for awhile.
Mike Myers is also a producer of the movie. He’s got all kinds of financial incentives to promote the movie. Any additional personal promotion that he can do will certainly help his bottom line.
Wish he’d come up with a better idea. Maybe it will be better than I expect.
It could only be better than I expect. The trailers look baaaad. and not bad in a “so bad it’s good” way, just bad. The bit where he’s supposed to be a kid and it’s his head on a smaller body just looks dumb.
I totally agree. I’m hard pressed to like his stuff anyway, but this looks worse than usual.
Nothing in the trailer makes me laugh, and I liked Wayne’s World and Austin Powers (each one less than the one before admittedly). He seems to have reached the “I’m Gumby, dammit, and I say it’s funny!” stage of his career.
The scene in the trailer where he picks up Verne Troyers and makes an Oscar speech just made me think “Damn… the Rat Pack was doing that 45 years ago with Sammy Davis, Jr.”. And yogis… are they really still around and funny and all now? What guy playing elephant jokes are left to make after Sellers’ The Party? A comedy about a small town underemployed therapist who wants to be the next Dr. Phil would probably be a lot funnier.
ETA: I think the pimping of this movie like it’s Saigon April '75 and showing Timberlake in a bikini twice in the trailer are both because the studio knows it’s a stinker. And the American Idol crossover http://youtube.com/watch?v=g9-jE3c1wQg was painfully unfunny, the only laugh being when David Cook cracked up over Archuleta’s catch of the shaving cream.
Myers is strangely like Hillary Clinton to me- liked him a lot in the '90s, now I have a strange (admittedly very low grade) hostility and put him in the “should take the millions and buy a mountaintop somewhere and enjoy luxurious exile from relevance” list.
And to think that I once had a lot of respect for MM when he refused to make a full-length movie of Sprockets because the premise would only be yet another example of SNL-movie tedium if stretched that thin.
The only movie I’ve avoided in recent years that actually looked worse than this based on the trailers was that Dana Carvey debacle The Master of Disguise.
The evidence that this is going to be a catastrophic fiasco, on par with The Master of Disguise and Leonard PArt 6, cannot be denied:
- The trailers fail to get good laughs.
- The central joke (a shyster guru) is stale and outdated.
- The producer/star based it in his home town and put his favourite sports team in it.
- It makes fun of dwarves.
- It’s got Jessica Alba in it. I will grant Ms. Alba is beautiful, but how many movies has she been in that were good?
- Note that Ms. Alba’s character is named after the least funny comedian in Canada, and
- It’s got Mike Myers in it.
Oh, this is gonna be baaaaad.
For those who aren’t aware of it, the Hollywood Stock Exchange is a game where you buy and sell “stock shares” in upcoming movies. You try and buy what you expect to be a high-grossing movie at a low price. After a movie is released, they take the gross from the first four weeks of release and credit stockholders with one HSX “dollar” for every million the movie makes.
The Love Guru is currently selling for roughly $70/share. So to buy now means you think the film will gross $70 million in the first four weeks of release.
People who bought this one above $50/share are going to take a fucking bath.
One. And all she had to do was dance on a stripper pole.
And it’s opening on the same day as Get Smart, which, from the trailers, looks funnier. Each had the opportunity to change its release date, but neither blinked.
You don’t have Timberlake in a bikini on your list. You don’t consider that a selling point do you?
Agreed, this movie seems to be nothing more than another rehash of the Austin Powers series, specifically AP3, one of the least amusing of the series (the Fook twins were one of the few high points 
)
Wayne’s World was a good example of an SNL sketch stretched to a movie, and Tia Carrere was a definite babe, SCHWING!, WW2 was the beginning of the slow slide to mediocrity for Meyers
If MM hasn’t jumped the shark just yet, he’s at least swung a leg over the motorcycle, and is idling, while the ramp over the pool filled with sharks (with frickin’ “la-ser” beams on their heads, to boot) is rolled into place…
Without taking her clothes off, even.
See, I don’t agree with this at all. Aside from having a funnier and less socially awkward star, there is absolutely nothing about Get Smart that interests me in the least. It looks about as hysterical and cutting-edge as Evan Almighty.
By contrast, the first Love Guru trailer did get a chuckle or two out of me (NOT the ones with Justin Timberlake). MM has a way of mixing the stupid and bizarre that it surprises a laugh out of me, even while thinking “that’s not funny.” Case in point: the adult head on the child body thing. In my head: dumb. But it makes me laugh every single time. It’s like he knows the formula for physically inducing laughter against all better judgment.
At least sometimes. It sure didn’t work on the endless “American Idol” pitch. I was in real pain until the actual trailer made me giggle (Verne Troyer shooting across an ice rink? Sorry, that’s gold).
One thing Meyers has proven is that he can take a character that no sane person would consider a good idea and manage to make it watchable…for one(ish) movie. If he could make me voluntarily sit through a movie about a 60’s-era British swinger-spy more than once, I am not (quite) writing off Guru Pitka. Yet.
I’m not saying it’s going to be good - certainly all evidence is to the contrary - but if anyone can pull off the stupid-crazy it just might be Meyers.
Bump (now that it’s released).
What’s odd is that as of this writing (4:21 pm CST) the imdb page for the movie is still “awaiting 5 votes”. Other movies that opened yesterday already have hundreds. I’m sure more than 5 people who vote on imdb have been to see this movie.
Anybody here seen it?