The Love Guru

*The BMB intro plays and then we see Film Brain in his room*

FB: Hello and welcome to Bad Movie Beatdown! Hey did you hear, Mike Myers has another movie out! Don't worry, it's just a documentary. But I can understand your concern, especially if you even saw a trailer for The Love Guru.

*Film Brain holds the Blu-Ray of the movie in disgust*

FB: (vo): Canadian comedian Mike Myers is something of an oddity when you look at his career. After he hit it big on Saturday Night Live resulting in the hugely successful spin-off Wayne's World, Myers managed to parlay that into film superstardom in a way that a select few from that show have.

This is largely down the Austin Powers films which spoofed the James Bond movies and the 60's era they came from that started as a cult hit to become a blockbuster trilogy. You'd think with that and providing the voice of Shrek that the world was his oyster but his filmography is quite slim when you take those 3 series' out.

This is largely because Myers is known for being a huge perfectionist and quite difficult to work with. To the point where Entertainment Weekly in advance of The Love Guru had an article that pretty much buried him but boy is it a great source of information. To give you an idea of Myers' obstinacy, around when Austin Powers 2 came out, Myers was set to do a film version of his SNL character Dieter for producer Brian Grazer but he refused a 20 million dollar pay-day when because he thought the script was sub-standard.

That may sound noble until you realize he was the one who wrote that script, and according to recent reports wasn't that bad either. The result was the film was cancelled and they started flinging lawsuits at each other with Grazer calling Myers egomaniacal with inexcusable bigotry. They eventually settled their differences, teaming up with Dieter director Bo Welch to make The cat in the hat. You know... maybe they were better off just not making a movie together.

2008's The Love Guru was Myers' first live action movie since Goldmember and was set to be his big comeback having spent the intervening years honing the character at various comedy clubs. Which given the results makes you wonder if they laughed because he was famous or simply out of pity. This is clearly Myers' baby though and through, the director has never helmed a movie before or since but it was also very personal for different reasons.

Myers is good friends with Deepak Chopra, who became his spiritual advisor after his fathers death in 1991. And the film is meant to be a delivery system for some wonderful ideas. That probably got lost somewhere because the movie was met with an overwhelming sea of hatred with a 14% Rotten Tomatoes score and a 24 on Metacritic and was a huge flop making back 40 million of it's 62 million dollar budget.

The Razzies also took their potshots, nominating it in several categories and winning worst screenplay, worst actor for Myers and worst film. And Empire Magazine readers voted in the 3rd worst film ever in a 2010 pole behind Battlefield Earth and Batman & Robin. Myers has responded by going back into hiding, today only emerging briefly for Inglorious Bastards, more Shrek voiceovers and his documentaries.