Sunday, June 22, 2008

The Love Guru

Having been to India and having experienced a lot of the same concepts that are mangled by this movie I found myself entertained by it. However, if you weren't fairly educated and sophisticated in your humor it might have been a little difficult to follow for some people. It could have been called Dr. Evil becomes the Love Guru because he uses a lot of the same shtick in The Love Guru as the Austin Power series of movies.

The main difference was that Austin Power is a recognizable parody of James Bond and those kinds of larger than life series of secret agents. In this movie unless you have some cultural experience with Indian ideas and concepts one might just get lost and miss a lot of the jokes, parodies and double entendres.

I had a great ride with this movie. I think it will do well worldwide especially in India and southeast asia where people will totally get this movie. However, I don't think it will go in blue collar america and even white collar might have had too much of this kind of thinking since the 1960s so it's hard to say.

I was 21 in 1969 and I have been to India and hung out with a lot of people who studied with Gurus and I myself studied SRF and studied with Tibetan Lamas in India and Nepal. So I get a lot of the jokes. One of the things all Teachers I knew of or met of the Guru or Tibetan Buddhist persuasion is that, "Until you can laugh at your very existence you cannot become enlightened." This is because as long as you are so serious you can't laugh at yourself you are just too stiff to ever become enlightened. Or "It's a sorry Saint that can't dance."

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