Lesbian Elephants, Anti-Comedy and More Winning Buzz From 'The Love Guru''s Opening Day
Seriously, there is such a thing as anti-comedy — the type of willful unfunniness we've been gleaning from every trailer, teaser and report emerging from the cultural black hole that is The Love Guru. Not that we require his validation, but the concept appeared again today in the highest-profile forum yet: A.O. Scott's slightly displeased NY Times review:
The word "unfunny" surely applies to Mr. Myers's obnoxious attempts to find mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, The Love Guru is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again. ...
[I]t's not that I object to the idea of, say, witnessing elephants copulate on the ice in the middle of a Stanley Cup hockey match, or seeing a dwarf sent flying over the same ice by the shock of defibrillator paddles. But it will never be enough simply to do such things. They must be done well.
Yikes! And that's not even all — after the jump, a Times reader purporting to have been a Guru extra chimed in with his own commentary about the hot elephant action and hockey-rink schadenfreude that made the film an even more refined brand of awful:
The article said "The rule seems to be that no one may upstage him and all must adore him." That is 100% true. We were not allowed to stand too close to him during a break in case we heard what he said. He could never remember his lines and some scenes were shot 50 times. When he was on the elephant on the ice we felt so sorry for the poor animal (both were female) that many people hoped he would be dumped and stepped on. Being in an ice rink from 7AM until 2AM is COLD.
Point taken, "iansinger" (and we apologize in advance that for your candor you'll never work as an extra again). We could likely have moved on from and maybe even embraced Guru's staggering anti-humor, but surely the cosmos — or at least the American Humane Society — will not stand for elephant sex abuse. This calls for revised credits — something disclaiming, "No animals were harmed in the making of this film, except those exploited in girl-on-girl pachyderm trysts and the ice-rink extras forced to watch." Cold, cold indeed.
