Anita Gillette

Making fun of its own light comedy clichés (like its must- stop- the- girl- from- marrying- the- wrong- guy finale) could have added an extra layer of laughs to a movie like "The Guru" -- if it wasn't entirely dependent on those same clichés to drive its plot.

Amiable, boy-faced Indian actor Jimi Mistry (seen in the imports "East is East" and "The Mystic Masseur") plays an enthusiastic immigrant named Ramu Gupta who comes to America with wide-eyed dreams of stardom, born of his jones for the movie musical "Grease." But through a series of screwball misunderstandings, he's soon being celebrated by Manhattan's trendy elite as "the Guru of Sex" -- a spiritual healer who tells the people what they want to hear: nookie makes good therapy.

Ramu gets all the sexual philosophy that's making him famous (he's soon appearing on "Sally Jesse Raphael") from a good-hearted porno actress (Heather Graham) he met when he mistakenly wandered into the wrong kind of audition. But in one of those ham-fisted movie mix-ups that could be corrected with a single line of dialogue, she thinks she's advising him on how to overcome performance anxiety and become an X-rated stud, and therefore shares her innermost sexual secrets.

Continue reading: The Guru Review