Being as susceptible to the delights of Schadenfreude as the next person I must admit that I have in the last 24 hours developed a perverse fascination with all the absolutely horrible reviews that the new Mike Meyers movie - The Love Guru - has been garnering. ( Another one - here. And whoa baby, this one's particularly vicious.) I'm almost starting to feel for him. It happened, and it happens, but I'm afraid that I have now read and thought enough about this completely irrelevant topic to the point where I have now developed my own theory about it, discovering, I feel, a truth that thus far seems to have eluded my colleagues in the international entertainment press, at least that I'm aware of:
In his publicity for this movie Meyers has talked repeatedly about how the death of his father in 1991 and his recent divorce caused him to go on his own personal, spiritual odyssey which lead him ultimately to Deepak Chopra and then to his subsequent embrace of a kind of Hollywood style Eastern mysticism, or whatever. Teachings and values he feels have informed the Love Guru, however silly; in the guise of "silliness". "I do silly, the language of silly", is I believe how he put it. And I think I saw him on E-talk Daily talking about how one can't look outside of oneself for validation, but can only journey in. Which in the case of an artist so profoundly and obviously insecure as Meyers must be no small feat. (And certainly explains why I'm here fucking blogging. About this!) But it has caused me to wonder:
What if this film's a fake?
In that its a fake as a serious attempt at a movie. Perhaps its not a movie at all, but a grand, extremely expensive spiritual exercise? What if, either of his own accord or perhaps encouraged by Chopra, Meyers deliberately set out to make the worst movie he could possibly make. One that he knew would repulse the critics, if not the viewing public at large, to such an extreme extent that they would have no choice but to heap every kind opprobrious insult on him they could possibly think of? (I mean in this podcast, the guy actually ponders whether or not Meyers might be, and I quote, "retarded" ?) And thus in the resulting fiasco, abandoned by the critics and perhaps even by his legions of fans, he would truly, finally be forced to love himself, to really, really love himself, unconditionally and without artifice, as everyone else would clearly despise him for subjecting them to what I heard one critic say could be one of the 'worst movies ever'. (My Uncle once told me that if people hate your play, they usually hate your soul.) Forced to face that which he is most afraid of, Meyers would finally begin a real and authentic journey towards true enlightenment. Without reservation, and no where to hide.
Finally, he would be free.
He met Chopra on a mountain somewhere in Beverly Hills and Chopra told him to make the worst movie he could make. But just don't tell anybody that is what you're up to. Because then it wouldn't count. You have to act like you're serious.
Because none of it is real. None of it. Not even Hollywood.
This is the age of Punk'd after all. What if Mike Meyers just punk'd everybody. And now he's somewhere, laughing like a buddha.
Enlightened.
That's the joke. And amazingly, the critics didn't get it.
And that's my theory.
I just wish he had left The Leafs out of it. They have enough bad karma.
