Review of Guru, The

Introduction

"The Guru" is a totally charming romantic comedy that brings together a heady mix of Bollywood, bonking and bulls**tting.

Jimi Mistry plays Ramu Gupta, an Indian dance studio instructor who emigrates to the USA to make his fortune like his cousin. A genuinely likeable innocent abroad, Ramu answers an audition call to find himself playing the lead in a porn movie. (The director and writers` imagining of what a porn movie is like and how they are made is charmingly naive). Meeting the delectable Sharonna (Heather Graham carving out a niche for herself playing this kind of role), calamity strikes when he cannot perform and during a break she offers him some friendly advice to get over his stage fright.

Most of the work in New York for a young Indian involves serving curry to morons from Wall Street, and one evening Ramu arrives at a swank Manhattan apartment house where a birthday party is being thrown for clueless New-Ager Lexi (Marisa Tomei). Her parents have booked a genuine Swami to impart some of the eastern wisdom she is so keen on, but unfortunately Swami Bu has tanked himself up on Budweiser in the kitchen and passes out just as he is supposed to go on. Without a Swami, the party will be a bust but Ramu`s mates have a plan and moments later Swami Ramu makes his entrance.

In desperation for something meaningfully deep to tell his audience, Ramu starts quoting Sharonna`s sexual advice to the gathered glitterati and he backs himself into a lie that will only snowball...


Watching "The Guru", I couldn`t help thinking that it was the sort of movie that Peter Sellers might have made around 1970, being a mix of Blake Edwards` Indian-Innocent-Abroad comedy "The Party" and the New Age sexual frankness of "I Love You Alice B. Toklas".

If I have any kind of criticism about the movie, it`s the lack of canniness shown by our hero Ramu. Possibly this has been a conscious effort on the part of the writer to avoid using stereotypes (at which she has sadly failed). I would have preferred Ramu to have been able to paraphrase Sharonna`s observations (to make them a little more oblique) so that he wasn`t just parrotting the information to his gullible American clients. Call it the "Crocodile Dundee" effect - the combination of the exotic (to the Americans) and conveying the information with authority. It would have made Ramu a stronger character without compromising his underlying honesty.

Video

The image is pin sharp, presented in the original 1.85:1. Print wear and tear is minimal, as you would expect for a brand new movie. Colours are highly saturated (a deliberate policy on the part of the cinematographer to echo the saturated colours used in Bollywood movies. This extended to utilising Fuji stock to get the colour depth required).

Audio

The soundstage is dominated by the front spread of the speakers as it is almost entirely a dialogue-driven movie. This is in spite of having the advantage of both a Dolby Digital 5.1 *and* DTS sound mix. The musical points in the movie are catchy, although the refrain featured in the animated menus might get a little wearing.

Features

There are yak tracks from the writer and director of the movie as well as one by the star Jimi Mistry. These are not very insightful - nobody even identifies the Indian city used for the beginning of the film, just talking about filming briefly "in India". The director/writer yak track has its own set of subtitles, but Jimi`s doesn`t. There is the Sugababes` track for the movie "Round Round", a photogallery, a set of deleted scenes (including the bulk of Sanjeev Baskar`s part) and two trailers for The Guru. There are also trailers for "Ned Kelly" and the upcoming Rowan Atkinson spy spoof "Johnny English". There are full HOH subtitles and positively psychedelic animated menu intros.

Conclusion

This is a nice, saucy little romantic romp full of charming and likeable characters. It is occasionally charming in its naivete, trying to be both near the knuckle but safe at the same time but any movie with Heather Graham can`t be completely faulted. There`s a great ending to the story with a little surprise in it. All told a satisfying package that will probably offend maiden aunts.