How Can Myers Get His Magic Mojo Back?

The wildly unfunny tag-line that accompanies The Love Guru – His Karma Is Huge – tells you everything you need know about Michael Myers’ comeback movie – that it’s a Grade A stinker.

"Crass, sloppy, repetitive and thin," said one US reviewer of the film, a clumsy skit on the Deepak Chopra school of Hindu-flavoured self-help.

"Downright anti-funny," said another. "An experience that will make you wonder if you will ever laugh again."

Sometimes, it is true, audiences and critics will agree to differ over a film. Christopher Nolan’s gigantic hit The Dark Knight, for instance, elicited largely luke-warm notices (many reviewers complained the fight scenes – the fuel that propels a superhero movie – were basically incoherent).

In The Love Guru’s case, however, there would seem to be a consensus: despite relentless publicity, the production raked in less than $30m on its opening weekend in the US, enough for it to be considered a borderline flop (Sex and the City, by comparison, earned over $100m).

So raw-knuckled has been the critic al and commercial drubbing, there is even speculation that the film could ring an artistic knell for the career of Myers, without a hit since 2002′s mostly awful Austin Powers 3: Goldmember.

If so, it wouldn’t be the first time a talent, once considered armour-plated, delivered a career-wrecking fumble.

As far back as Warren Beatty’s Ishtar, wunder-kinds have been blasting themselves in the foot by delivering the wrong project to the wrong people at the wrong time.

Ishtar put paid to Beatty’s standing as a box office icon (he spent a long time in the wilderness, reduced to gentle agit-prop and roles that parodied his ladies’ man rep).

Nearly as disastrous was Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin, which not only relegated a once vaunted journey-man to the directorial B-list but came close to ruining the prospects of a barely out-of-ER George Clooney.

So much for antiquity, however. Lately, we’ve seen an absolute deluge of career-breaking turns. Sharon Stone’s attempt to revive her femme fatale lustre with Basic Instinct 2 served only to underscore her decline (the film grossed $3.2m, signaling the end of Stone’s leading-lady status).

Worse yet was Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, a rambling, surrealist mush from the Donnie Darko director which suggested that: a) his first movie was a lightning-in-a-bottle stroke of genius, and b) lightening doesn’t strike twice, at least not in the independent movie business.

Scouring the meandering plot for meaning, critics could come up with only one: Kelly may well find himself back stacking shelves at the video store.

Such is the price of casting Justin Timberlake as a singing army vet.

It’s not just movie-makers who have a tendency to drop career- killers of course. Musicians have a habit of doing so, too.

Consider the Spice Girls’ Forever, an ill-advised flirtation with R’n'B whose limp 200,000 sales brought the curtain down on Girl Power (debut album Spice had done seven million).

Further back, Meat Loaf’s 500,000-selling Dead Ringer marked the beginning of a 12- year spell in the wilderness (predecessor Bat Out of Hell moved 14m), during which the rotund bawler was reduced to playing pubs and sports halls (including a basketball arena on Cork’s Northside).

Even U2, one of the canniest in the business, nearly sank themselves with 1997′s too-ironic-for-its-own-good Pop.

Sensing they’d strayed dangerously far from their original craw- thumping formula, they reverted, lightning quick, to the blue-print with 2000′s epic All That You Can’t Leave Behind.

For Myers to pull off a similar game-saving about-turn, he’d probably have to crank out another Austin Powers movie double- quick.

Then again, maybe he shouldn’t fret too much. Sometimes a perceived flop can come to be seen as work of genre-redefining genius.

Take Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys. Judged a career killer on release in 1991, the album is nowadays deemed a masterpiece.

Looking back, it’s clear the problem wasn’t that the Beasties had ruined their good name. It was that they had recorded an LP so far ahead of anything else in its field (in this case, sample-specific rap) nobody could truly appreciate it for what it was.

(c) 2008 Belfast Telegraph. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.