Comments on: I Am Curiously Humourless Orange

By: Pete Baran

Pete Baran — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:05:40 +0000

You know what, I think yr doubling of Peter Sellers at the end there probably explains this entire project (what with the Austin Powers phenom being closer to Clouseau than any other comic idea I could think of). In the end the Love Guru does end up being Wayne with different silly hair, but whose gormlessness loses the remarkable inherent sympathy that previously has been the (unconscious) secret of Myers schtick.

The Kanye West cameo is a one second reminder of the Katrina bit, and as such retains West’s and REAL MYERS credibility.

By: Andrew Farrell

Andrew Farrell — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:25:03 +0000

The impression I got from the trailer was that he was never convincingly baffled, that he’d pushed it so far that it was always Mike Myers under a very thin mask.

Nice to see Kayne West turn up - possibly he thinks that he owes Myers a favour after the George Bush think (if so he is WRONG).

Another guru film: the terrible Holy Man with Eddie Murphy. Might the real culprit here be some merging of Peter Sellers in The Party and, er, Peter Sellers in Being There?

By: Pete Baran

Pete Baran — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:50:30 +0000

Both of these aspects are missing from The Love Guru (or as the Russians would have it THE SEX GURU - hooray for phonetically spellings).

Potentially interesting threads about The Love Guru completely missed by the film:
a) The difference between Love and Sex
b) Retreats, followers etc as extended non-traditional families.
c) How can you represent any kind of authority when your technique is all hippy claptrap you made up yourself.

It does however manage to completely destroy the Ghandi movie, as Ben Kingsley redoes the accent for “laughs”: cross-eyed and farting. So for that we can be a touch grateful.

I think AP is a good character because of the melancholy, and Myers tries to repeat some of that action here via reusing the character arc. But Guru Pitka is never sympathetic, and is always baffled. Powers as a man out of time but in a plot was always watchable.

By: a logged-out pˆnk s lord whatnot

a logged-out pˆnk s lord whatnot — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:42:15 +0000

the things i like about the austin powers movies are:

1: the relationship between dr evil, his son and his staff — the sociology of supervillainy-qua-institution is a funny and interesting territory (plus dr evil is a great character)

2: AP’s melancholy bafflement at the vanishing of 60s mores

both of these are “what if action movies were real life?” ideas, but i think they’re kind of rich and interesting ideas even when they’re just gags