I thought all the critics had to be wrong. When I saw reviews that called ”The Love Guru” career suicide for Mike Myers or comparable to watching a pregnant woman smoke a cigarette and drink a beer, I thought that there was no possible way this movie could be that bad.

I was wrong.

“The Love Guru” is a complete mess of a comedy. The acting is horrid but the terrible script does the cast no favors and the direction is so bad it is actually noticeable. Here’s what I mean when I say that. There’s a scene in “Atonement” where the soldiers gather on the beach, and there’s a five minute tracking shot that leaves audiences wondering, “Wow, how did they do that?” In “The Love Guru” I often found myself wondering, “Ugh, why did they do that?”

Myers plays Guru Pitka, a self-help guru trained in India with Deepak Chopra but always ranked behind Chopra. Pitka wants what Chopra has, namely guest spots on “Oprah” and even more love from his adoring followers. He will get that spot on “Oprah” if he can reunite a hockey star and his girlfriend and help the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup. Of course, Guru Pitka succeeds but not before close to 90 laughless minutes pass.

I’m serious. There’s not one laugh in this movie. Not one. The audience was half filled when I saw this movie and no one laughed. Ever. There was one girl who tittered but I got the feeling that she didn’t get out much. Even the high school boys who were shooting straw wrappers with their noses weren’t laughing at the sub-sophomoric attempts at humor in the movie.

Myers deserves a lot of the blame for this failure. He starred as Pitka and co-wrote the script. The unfortunate thing is how many people he brought down with him. Steven Colbert and Jim Gaffigan have never been less funny as hockey announcers, Verne Troyer shows how uncharming Mini-Me can be when he opens his mouth, Justin Timberlake was game as a Celine Dion-loving goalie but his character was merely one note and Jessica Alba proves she brings nothing to a film outside of a pretty face and a good body.

You might think I’m exaggerating, but I swear I’m not. You can see the flop sweat on Myers as he mugs and minces at the end of every scene hoping to squeeze out a chuckle from the audience and some goodwill for the scenes to come, but he can’t. Everything that worked in the Austin Powers movies (the double entendres, the musical numbers, the puns, the cameos) falls flatter than flat here. It makes me wonder if Myers will ever bounce back from this debacle. I hope so.

In closing, you shouldn’t see this movie. It is not so bad, it’s good. It will be a painful experience for you. At the end, during the final musical number, I couldn’t stomach anymore and just walked out. I think they should substitute this movie for waterboarding.

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