Synopsis: Pitka is an American who was left at the gates of an ashram in India as a child and raised by gurus. He moves back to the United States to seek fame and fortune in the world of self-help and spirituality. His unorthodox methods are put to the test when he must settle a rift between Toronto Maple Leafs star hockey player Darren Roanoke and his estranged wife. After the split, Roanoke’s wife starts dating L.A. Kings star Jacques Grande out of revenge, sending her husband into a major professional skid – to the horror of the teams’ owner Jane Bullard and Coach Cherkov. Pitka must return the couple to marital nirvana and get Roanoke back on his game so the team can break the 40-year-old “Bullard Curse” and win the Stanley Cup.

Review: Mike Myers’ first live-action comedy in five years has a few good yuks, but The Love Guru’s laughter karma fizzles more than sizzles.

Acting: If you’re looking for one-man shows, Mike Myers is your man. Clearly, the actor is this generation’s Peter Sellers, choosing to play characters far from his own persona, such as spy Austin Powers or Wayne Campbell. Guru Pitka fits right in. In Love Guru, Pitka throws all sorts of self-help mumbo jumbo around hoping some of it sticks. He is like a distant cousin to other Sellers incarnations in films such as The Magic Christian, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas and particularly his Indian actor Hrundi V. Bakshi in The Party. But Love Guru doesn’t match those films or even any part of the Austin Powers trilogy, largely because the gags take precedence over any true character development. For every Bollywood musical takeoff that works, there’s a couple of bits that fall flat. It’s hit and miss, despite Myers best efforts to sell this show as something more than an “SNL” sketch. Surrounding the star is the spectacularly unfunny but still beautiful Alba and the surprisingly funny AND beautiful Justin Timberlake, who holds his own in the comedy department, especially with his broken Canadian accent. Austin Powers sidekick Verne Troyer is back as the not-so-swell coach of the Leafs, and he makes a good hockey puck, while Ben Kingsley does his thing as the master Guru Tugginmypudha.

Direction: First-timer Marco Schnabel is credited as director, but it’s a good bet star/co-writer (with Graham Gordy) Mike Myers was calling most of the shots; it appears Myers did not have someone behind the camera reigning him in. Too bad. A sharp comedy director could have shaped the film into more than just a series of sight and sound gags designed for quick laughs at the expense of a coherent story. For his first live action film in five years (he does the animated Shrek films in between), it’s a little disappointing The Love Guru isn’t better than it is, particularly from the creative mind behind the Austin Powers trilogy. Myers says he came up with this idea while seeking spiritual guidance from Deepak Chopra after his father died. The opportunity for some sharper satire and a stronger storyline is traded for a hit or miss 88 minute skit that has its moments but never finds it’s true Karma.

Bottom Line: Hollywood.com rated this film 2 stars.

Synopsis: An assassin is assigned to kill a Middle East oil minister. His cover is that he’s producing a big trade show that includes a wedding between a local pop star and a politico, but complications ensue.

Review: This is the kind of off-the-wall, daring, polarizing, love it or hate it political satire we don’t see much anymore. John Cusack’s game attempt to bring it back makes War, Inc. all worthwhile for adventurous, open minded filmgoers.

Acting: As co-writer and co-producer, Cusack clearly has a lot invested in War, Inc., a labor of love that uses hard-edged, sometimes inaccessible satire to make his points about the sad state of American foreign policy. Casting himself as the hitman, he is comfortably once again in Grosse Pointe Blank territory, playing a killer-for-hire for laughs. Cusack’s comedies vary widely, but this one is much closer in spirit to Grosse Pointe than conventional stuff like America’s Sweethearts and Must Love Dogs. You feel he must have done those latter comedies for a paycheck in order to finance a few more War, Incs. Here he has surrounded himself with a first-rate group of actors who seem comfortable falling flat on their face in order to mine for laughs. Dan Aykroyd (ironically, Cusack’s co-star in Grosse Pointe Blank) has just the right acerbic tone as a Dick Cheney-like former V.P. still out to peddle American influence around the world. Marisa Tomei is sexy and funny in a smallish role as the reporter, while Hilary Duff is clearly stretching and almost unrecognizable as the international pop star. Ben Kingsley as John Cusack’s old boss is well cast, and it’s great to see sister Joan Cusack working with her brother on a passion project like this.

Direction: Without question this type of satirical picture is the hardest thing to do. It’s the kind of thing Billy Wilder with One, Two, Three or Stanley Kubrick with Dr. Strangelove could pull off seemingly effortlessly. War, Inc. is nowhere close to that league but as almost a lost form of cinema you have to admire director Joshua Seftel’s efforts here to make it work. He does more often than not, particularly in some of the more dialogue-heavy scenes in which the actors get to damn inhibition and let loose. On the down side is the deliberate bleak color palette, which comes off too dark and dreary at times and seems to work against the comedy. At its heart , War, Inc. aims to provoke while it entertains and not every kind of audience is going to be receptive, but for those who like their movies shaken and stirred with a touch of irony, it’s worth a look.

Bottom Line: Hollywood.com rated this film 3 stars.