By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * *)
If you have been reading the serious pages of the paper you will know that puzzled, thinking Americans have been asking themselves, "Why does the rest of the world hate us?" in recent months. Movies like this, weapons of mass cultural destruction from the world's
only entertainment superpower, are part of the answer.
Jimi Mistry (East Is East) plays Ramu Gupta, a young Indian who comes to New York with his dreams. Until he gets that break, Gupta waits on tables in Indian restaurants.
Finally, his luck changes. A director, Dwain (Michael McKean), casts Gupta in his next movie. It's not until he's on set that Gupta realises he's in a porn flick, starring alongside Sharonna (Heather Graham), falling for her and drinking in her homespun philosophy.
In one of those scriptwriters' coincidences, Gupta is asked to fill in for a drunken guru at an exclusive party and repeats Sharonna's twaddle to gullible socialites. Soon he is the talk of Manhattan, "The Guru of Sex", and even has a spoiled Park Ave princess (Marisa Tomei) seduce him. The joke (?) is that Gupta's so-called wisdom has come, secondhand, from a porn star.
The Guru is crass, insensitive and ignorant. As a social document, it's about as enlightened (and funny) as a Donald Rumsfeld press conference.
You suspect that few of the actors will include it on their CVs — after an accomplished start in Britain, this is hardly Mistry's big break, while Graham continues the downmarket slide from
Bowfinger and Boogie Nights to From Hell and Killing Me Softly.
It's not her first role as a porn star, you wonder if it'll be her last. Blame Daisy Von Scherler Mayer, the director, for driving this miss. You do expect better from producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, who were behind Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary.
DVD features: movie (95min); commentaries with director Daisy von Scherler and writer Tracey Jackson, and with Jimi Mistry; Sugababes music video; deleted scenes; animated photo gallery; trailers.
