Mike Myers has the secret to the lethally addictive power of Johnny�s Hamburgers fries-and-gravy combination, and there�s not a Scarberian worth their salt who wouldn�t want to know it.
�They parboil them, fry them once, put them in a cardboard box, shake it, then they fry them again,� says the actor of the east-end burger landmark.
So it�s true what they say: You can take the boy out of Scarborough, but you can�t take Scarborough out of the boy � as evidenced by Myers� latest comedy, The Love Guru. The Saturday Night Live alumnus has always inserted shout-outs to Toronto in previous work such as Wayne�s World or his Austin Powers series, but this time his hometown was part of the story.
Filmed in part at the Air Canada Centre and Casa Loma, The Love Guru centres around Guru Pitka (Myers). A new-age self-help expert, he has to rejuvenate the confidence of a Toronto Maple Leafs sniper (Romany Malco from The 40-Year-Old Virgin) who is in the midst of a bid for the Stanley Cup and whose wife leaves him for his rival, well-endowed goaltender Jacques �Le Coq� Grande (Justin Timberlake). It�s a work steeped in Canadian culture, but Myers isn�t worried that international audiences won�t be in on the joke.
�Thinking about what people get or don�t get, no. It�s about what you think is funny. That�s really what I do,� says Myers, 45. �A movie is supposed to take you somewhere you�ve never been before.�
Directed by Marco Schnabel, the movie is vintage Myers with its carefully crafted pelvic humour, grandiose dance numbers and merciless teasing of Verne Troyer (who stars as the Leafs� irascible coach), set against a Bollywood backdrop. But he fashioned the story around one of his greatest fantasies: A Stanley Cup victory for the Leafs and an end to the 41-years-and-counting Cup drought. �I, like the rest of Toronto, have been waiting patiently,� says Myers, who was only four years old when the Leafs last hoisted the trophy in 1967. �I figured, �If you write it, they will come.� I wasn�t going to wait for it to happen, I was going to use this wonderful blessing that I have of being able to make stuff up. For those who stay the course and believe, it will be a wonderful day.�
>> Read Metro's review on The Love Guru.
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