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THE GURU
CAST: Jimi Mistry, Heather Graham, Marisa Tomei,
Michael McKean, Dash Mihok, Emil Marwa, Christine Baranski
DIRECTOR: Daisy von Scherler Mayer
"Bright dialogue and finely embroidered performances adorn
‘The Guru’ like festive beading on a pair of made-in-India
bedroom slippers--unexpected and inordinately cheering in the drab
dead of winter. This very funny studio picture plays like an indie
lark, a blending of venerable (and currently trendy) Bollywood musical
conventions, Hollywood romantic-comedy formula, satiric ‘Guffman’-esque
riffs, and droll parody at the expense of the enduring American
porn-flick industry." --Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
"The bizarre outcome of this nervy conceptual
hybrid is a movie that plays stylistic hopscotch as it jumps from
one square to the next, teetering perilously each time it lands on
one quaking ankle. Lurching between a loudmouthed sitcom and a crude
social satire, the movie, directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer from
a screenplay by Tracey Jackson, also shoehorns three imitation Bollywood
production numbers into its uneasy mix…Behind its Hollywood-meets-Bollywood
banner, ‘The Guru’ is a grindingly conventional comedy that
insists on tying up its subplots in pretty ribbons and bows."
--Stephen Holden, The New York Times
"Calibrated to please, ‘The Guru’ is a down-market
but enjoyable goof. It's also not as dumb as it looks. The filmmakers
aren't interested in subverting clichés, just tweaking them.
Central to the movie's charm is how it knowingly taps into two of
our more cherished mythologies--inevitable true love and immigrant
triumphalism -- but always at an oblique angle." --Manohla Dargis,
The Los Angeles Times
"In its more inspired moments, this chaotic, disappointing
film attempts a kind of synthesis of Bollywood and Hollywood. And
its best jokes are set pieces in which the whole cast suddenly breaks
into elaborate, Bollywood-style dance numbers…It's a film pregnant
with comic possibility that ought to be much funnier than it is…Slack,
heavy-handed direction by Daisy von Scherler Mayer, and lumpy, awkward
writing by Tracy Jackson ensure ‘Guru’ feels much longer
than its 95 minutes." --Jonathan Foreman, The New York Post
"‘The Guru’ has plenty of good laughs, and often
its cheesiness is an intentional nod to the assembly-line musicals
of Mistry's native Indian film industry. But the fact remains that
much of the story relies on trite plot devices, and freely acknowledging
such devices doesn't excuse using them as a crutch." --Bob
Blackwelder, The San Francisco Examiner
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