The Guru (DVD) > Reviews (18)

“God damn you all to hell!” shouted Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes. “Was it just me who thought that was sh*t?” asked my girlfriend as we walked out of the cinema the other day.

What bearing do these two statements have on each other? Well, the former is what I want to shout at the trailer-splicers for The Guru. And the latter – well, it wasn’t just her.

***THE PLOT***

Meet Ramu – he lives in India and he’s a dance teacher. But never mind all that, he’s moving to America to become a movie star just like one of his friends did. Once there he discovers you can’t just turn up in America and get a film role. So, he starts a job in an Indian restaurant. This goes badly – he’s fired - and he ends up trying out for a porno. There, he meets Sharona who he talks into giving him tips on being a successful porno actor. In return, he will pay for her dream wedding cake.

Then one day, his life takes an unexpected turn as he crashes a birthday party held for spoilt idiot Lexi to ask his boss from the restaurant for his old job back. Instead he stands in for a passed-out drunk Indian guru, and spouts some of Sharona’s sex tips before leading the room in an impromptu Bollywood number. Lexi falls for him and is soon helping him become a well-known name. Meantime, Rami is falling for the already spoken for Sharona. What on earth will happen?
* * * * *

Never have I been so misled by a trailer in all my recently. This looked like a safe proposition, a lively comedy with Bollywood stylings and some unusual music. The first thing I thought was “Buddha of Suburbia” lite. That book/TV series is a superb pastiche of upper class gullibility, society and of the rules set out by life.

This however, is heavy handed tripe.

***ALL IN FAVOUR***
Jimi Mistry. Jimi Mistry is the best thing about the movie. So it’s a shame he gets some dire-logue to work with (more on which below). He’s obviously a very talented actor, and is more wasted than a depressed Freddie Prinze Jr on Oscar night with this flick. Also impressive are his family (who only feature for about 4 minutes) and Sanjeev Bhaskar from Goodness Gracious Me as Ramu’s boss from the restaurant.

Oh, and the impromptu Bollywood number? Except for Marisa Tomei’s cringeworthy dancing, it’s pretty damn good. If only there had been more of them through the movie.

Joke wise, there are a few giggles to be had – well, those that weren’t already featured in the trailer. So that’d be ALL THE DECENT ONES then. Minor titters are to be gleaned from some of the jokes on the porno sets (“Hello, my name is Senator Snatch”) but otherwise…ah hell. There is nothing more redeeming to be said. So, moving on…

***THOSE OPPOSED***

Now I don’t like to bad-mouth British cinema efforts, but that’s just the way it comes out, especially when faced with such a lacklustre attempt at cashing in on the trendification of Bollywood. It sickens me.

And so – the horrors to contend with are as follows:

“Playful” racism. An unpleasant American yells racial slurs at Ramu in the Indian restaurant.

He sticks up for himself. For this he is punched in the face by the ignoramus and later, fired for “causing a scene”. Do the owners of the establishment have no pride? Why would they want such people in there insulting their staff? Oh, and he is cast as a “native” in his first porno. Didn’t this kind of joke stop in the 1980’s? Surely something more sophisticated exists than dressing up someone from another country in a grass skirt for cheap giggles. And they nickname him "Rammy" on the porn set. Hi-larious!

That script. Flatter than a pancake on a Dutch road following an elephant parade. Case in point – Graham’s character tells Ramu to lay on the floor and imagine moving his body to music. She uses a Billy Joel song to illustrate tilting her pelvis around. Well, dagnabbit, this doesn’t work, so she gets him to climb on top of her. Tilt tilt tilt. I turned round to my girlfriend at this point and said, “I wonder if the fiancée is going to turn up?” Well…I ain’t psychic but I know a sh*t script when I hear it being ‘acted’. Lo, the fiancé doth turn up and yea Ramu doth hide in yonder bathroom and pretend to be a plumber. Yawn!

The line “move to the beat of your heart” (or something like that) is repeated way too many times, and is delivered with the same passion that a teenager has for doing as they are told. Similar ‘spiritual’ lines perforate the movie and add very little to it. “Fear freezes”, “your naked body is like a costume” and the like. Now, what made them so execrable for me is that Heather Graham can’t act. She tells Ramu these little pieces of philosophy that she apparently leads her life by. And because she doesn’t sound genuine as she passes them, on, any kind of satirical effect is lost when Rami repeats them. Which he does – often – and straight after the scene in which he is told them! So a fair bit of the script is repeated – lazy stuff. So what exactly has Tracey Jackson written before? Why, lots of pilot episodes of TV shows that have not been picked up, “movies of the week” in America, a movie vehicle for Goldie Hawn (cringe) and this is her first movie. Let’s pray it’s the last. Apparently she ‘loves’ Indian culture, If only she’d got some passion into the script. Or handed the duties over to someone WHO KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING.

We also have those oh-so-original scenes such as the walk in the park culminating in someone not managing to reveal their feelings, the resolution between characters who have been lying to each other, the “be yourself” message, the awkward family dinner, the spoiled marriage, the rip-off shot from The Graduate, being corrupted by power then throwing it away for love, and a resolution SO painfully sappy it hurts. Just read this (taken from the Channel 4 microsite for the movie) that director Daisy Von Scherler Mayer spewed forth from her speak-pipe: "From the moment I read it, I visualized it… just one of those amazing magical experiences that rarely happens to a director. I immediately knew what I could do with it.

I… had dreamed of [an] expansive production, broader in content and scope. This was it 'The Opportunity'." Says it all for me. Would you watch a movie by these people?

The macarena.

Marisa Tomei. I hate her character. She’s a spoiled brat who picks and chooses between religions like they’re candy bars and does it all to get attention from her mother despite protests that she is doing it to discover who she is. She’s oh so happy with Ramu and as such gets walked all over. Then at the end he more or less says, “forget everything I taught you and do what you like”. “Okay”. GAH!

The flatmates. Just not funny. All the best gags from them are in the trailer. And one of them does nothing for the whole movie except strike yoga poses in the background and say “hello” occasionally. The purpose of him? NONE AT ALL! In fact all the supporting characters are right out of the catalogue – or the bargain bin. The screeching transvestite. The greedy best friend. The man with the crap catchphrase “okey dokey pokey”. The porn director who takes a camera everywhere. The stuck up mother. The “tart with a heart”. Overprotective boyfriend. All now available for $1.99 - get ‘em before we melt ‘em down and use them to fill in the foundations of a bridge.

The soundtrack. Expecting, as I was, a musical? Well, there is the Bollywood number – the same one. Over and over. And the unnecessary and OH SO VERY LONG fantasy sequence in which Ramu and Sharona are in a Bollywood movie then start singing “You’re The One That I Want” from Grease. Otherwise it’s pop crud, including the token new song – “Round Round” by Sugababes in this case. The (first) musical sequence works so well, I don’t know why they didn’t continue the theme, because as a musical you could get away with the fluffy dialogue and have the slow melodrama broken up with flashy musical numbers.

Let’s face it, Moulin Rouge’s story was normal as hell, but the songs lifted it into a great piece of entertainment. So imagine ver Rouge mixed with Buddha of Suburbia sans music and with shoddy lines like “I have something to tell you but it’s difficult” or “god is watching everything we do” that may as well have come from Sunset Beach and this is The Guru. Any message the movie tries to convey gets pissed on by cheap jokes, bad acting and dreadful pacing.

This is a superb advert for Bollywood though, as I’d be far more interested in getting off my ass and seeing Devdas now, as I imagine the emotions are genuine and the story more entertaining than this over-hyped piece of average film.

Probably worth a look when it arrives on Channel 4 (inevitably) if you have nothing else to do like file your eyeballs on an alligator’s back or pick out your tongue with a rusty hook. Until then, buy a copy of The Buddha of Suburbia. It’s a better example of the same kinda thing. With more sex!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Things I learned from watching this movie:

o The best place to chant “Om” is in the toilet.
o Firemen have cute nicknames for each other.
o Porno stars have f**k-all taste in wedding cakes.
o Billy Joel music is not improved by anything, even a woman gyrating her hips to it.
o People are really stupid. Including me for being taken in by trailers.

Thanks for partaking!

If you really must know “more” - www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/G/gu​ru/ - but be warned – it is sickening. Except the interview with Sanjeev Bhaskar.

© P$ 2002