The Guru: A pure masalla movie

Hi! I’m siting in the gold class screen of a Star city cinema in Birmingham watching the colourful summer blockbuster, “The Guru.” As the film begins I press the button on the side of my leathery chair and adjust the back of it to 145°, my favourite and comfortable position to watch movies.

This light weight comedy!… hang on… hang on…I don’t know why they called it comedy movie, when there isn’t enough comedy in it to call it comedy movie. In the 1hr 55mins of the whole duration you don’t even laugh for at least 20 minutes. What kind of comedy movie is this? God knows what makes one English film critic say, “This movie is magic, You’ll laugh till it hurts.” And another one claming, “This film delight will make you chuckle, giggle, splutter and guffaw out loud.” Well, to be honest I didn’t find any remote connection of this film with comedy. Perhaps it’s me, who’s going through a hard time these days. OK I admit there is a one funny sequence in the film when Ramu appears for his porn audition and dances the Macarena in his underwear. Alright! Alright!! There’s another laughable scene where Sharonna is bouncing on the floor while giving (private one to one) lesson of sex education to Ramu.

Anyway, the story of the guru is wrapped up round an Indian dance Instructor, Ramu Gupta. This character is played by Jimi Mistry, who previously worked in film East is East and played the role of Dr. Fred Fonseca in East Enders. Ramu is an enthusiastic, young and good-looking bloke, who is fed up from his dance teaching job in Delhi and desires to explore his talent by becoming a Hollywood film star. So he embarks for the bright lights of America to discover his fame and fortune in the movies, but ends up working

in a Indian restaurant. After being fired from a job as a waiter, he heads for his favourite career. On a hopeless search of fame, he finds it tough in America and just to fulfil his dream he managed to get a part in porn video. There he fails to perform in front of a camera (correction! It was a camcorder) even tough semi-nude, blonde and glamorous Sharonna hugging and snogging him. The role of Sharonna which is played by 32years old stunning Hollywood beauty, Heather Graham (Ex girlfriend of Adam Ant and Ed Burns. Now she is single and available, guys!), who previously acted in Licence To Drive, Boogie Nights and The Spy Who Shagged Me. Sharonna guides him with some sexual enlightenment. Despite all the efforts and the encouragement of sexy co-star Sharonna, Ramu doesn’t manage to get erection and eventually gives up his role.

Lively and socialite Lexi (Marisa Tomei) organises a party for bored and middle-aged Manhattan couples. A guru hired by her to entertain, but has one too many drinks and by happy accident Ramu is forced to take his place. After posing as a Swami or self help sex guru, Ramu becomes the talk of the town and finds his luck changing. When therapy crazed Lexi falls for the guru and make spiritual love to him, Ramu’s fame begins to spread even wider. Suddenly he’s bombarded with uptight New Yorkers who believes on his every sacred (rubbish is more appropriate word) word. There Jimi copied Sanjeev Baskar’s (Who is also acting a small role in this movie) acting from Goodness Gracious Me.  Even though Ramu is a hugely popular sex guru, but infect he is ignorant and knows nothing about this so called subject (sex). So he goes to lovely porn veteran girlfriend Sharonna (who is also a primary school teacher) for the tips. She thinks she’s training him for a starring role in one of her movies, but he’s using the advise to form his guru teachings on sexual liberation. Actually he contacted sharonna for words of wisdom to improve his performance, while Lexi hopes to use him to heal the world as her new discovery.

While he attends private lessons at Sharonna’s house, the couple starts getting closer to each other. At that point Sharonna also had fling with an American and she carries on with her previous affair too.

            Meanwhile, Sharonna is having her own reality issues, culminating in one of the funniest wedding scenes on celluloid. Unfortunately her American groom happens to be a homosexual. On the other hand Ramu begins to think his deception isn’t worth it because he’s hiding the truth from the love of his life. So he decides to reveal the secret to Sharonna and rushes straight away to the church where she was to get married. He interrupts the ceremony and delivers some emotional dialogues stolen from old Hindi movies. Guess what? Sharonna leaves everything behind to embrace Ramu. Then the groom’s boyfriend turns up to marry him and the gay groom runs off with him. In the climax scene Sharonna dances in Ramu’s arms and sings Hindi songs, accompanied by all the White guests dancing Bhangra. Would you believe gori’s actually singing a Hindi song fluently, which even many of the British Asians can’t sing or finds it harder to pronounce those difficult Hindi words. Well, believe it or not, that’s what they have portrayed in the film. I must confess this is the first and only English film in which I’ve seen an Asian guy kissing (actually smooching) attractive White female. As it is certificated in the category of 15, so you don’t expect to see those erotic, sizzling, steamy and mind-blowing sex scenes that you enjoyed in Basic Instinct, Kama Sutra or in Eyes Wide Shut. The executive producer Shekhar Kapoor (Director of Bandit Queen and Elizabeth) stated in one of his Interview that he dreamed up the whole scenario from his own experiences of arriving in  London as a young man from India.

Calibration of Indian father and White mother Jimi Mistry is brilliant as the eastern innocent abroad.

Apparently shagadelic Heather Graham loved playing the role of Sharonna. As she  indicated on the premier of the movie in London by saying, “Where else would I get to play a Hindi princess, porn star, bride and teacher all in one film?” I think this role and especially Indian costumes suites her very well. She looks absolutely fantastic in Lehnga.

The guru is a pure masalla (spice, i.e. commercial) movie in which spices (formulas) taken from Hollywood and Bollywood film Industry are blended nicely by director Daisy Von Scherier Mayer (Party Girl). It is breaking new grounds. The guru has already knocked the Hollywood blockbuster Men In Black 2 off the top UK box office. As I mentioned above it drags on a bit and doesn’t boast belly laughs, but I am sure still many people will enjoy this movie and come out smiling out of the cinema.

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