The trailer for Michael Myers’ The Love Guru arrived in the mail today, and got some heavy rotation as well this past weekend on the small screen, if not before — though it doesn’t yet seem to be online*, if such a thing is possible these days. I watched it three times — twice in TiVo-captured form, once again on messengered DVD, to make sure I wasn’t missing anything — and nope, I didn’t laugh once.

The film, due June 20 from Paramount — or about the time Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be milking its last reasonably expected repeat business from wallets — stars Myers in his first new original character since Austin Powers, as “the second best guru in India,” Pitka. An American who was left at the gates of an ashram in India as a child (shades of Joe Dirt, anyone?) and raised by religious types, Pitka moves back to the United States to seek fame and fortune in the world of spirituality-infused self-help. His unorthodox methods are put to the test when he’s hired to settle a rift between a star hockey player on the Toronto Maple Leafs (Romany Malco) and his estranged wife (Meagan Good). The movie costars Jessica Alba, Verne Troyer and Justin Timberlake, alongside the aforementioned Malco and Good.

Sigh… where to begin? First off, any comedy relying on ice hockey is just a dicey proposition; Americans do not care about the sport, outside of about five cities (maybe fewer). And I thought Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday had reliably exhausted the idea of a hot, young female sports franchise owner (Cameron Diaz there, Alba here, with Troyer as the coach). The story here seems tired, implausible and uninteresting (hat trick!), seemingly leaving us with just lots of winking from Myers.

In more specifics, the “ding!” sound effect accompanying Myers’ twinkly moustache curl (used twice) seems lazily nipped from television (a “Debbie Downer” sketch, perhaps?), Alba’s delivery of the already very predictable, “Well, this one time in college…” line is dreadful, and the incongruous use of Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” feels like a munificent lender from a waiver signed on the set of the third Austin Powers. Timberlake — who plays Good’s new suitor, and a fellow hockey player — is the high point of the piece (with his line, “You know, like in the porno?”), but even he only brought a half-smile to my face, not a laugh. Honestly, the first thought I had upon seeing the trailer for The Love Guru was, “Hmmm… I’d rather watch 2002’s The Guru again, actually. That wasn’t a bad little movie — some fun Bollywood stuff, musical numbers, plus the advantage of Heather Graham and Marisa Tomei.”

* Update, 3/5: The trailer is now online, via the movie’s web site.

The movie title College Road Trip conjures up pleasant memories of Amy Smart in Road Trip (and maybe not so pleasant memories of a rail-thin, underwear-clad DJ Qualls getting squashed in the same flick). So why is that moniker the title for a G-rated Disney flick about a clingy father and his college-bound daughter, costarring Raven-Symone Pearman, late of The Cosby Show and recently of That’s So Raven?

The trailer for the movie, opening March 7, finds (both wildly and characteristically, in equal measure) Martin Lawrence acting the fool, despite the fact that his character is a… police chief? Right. Nice. Look, I don’t begrudge Lawrence the right to make a living, and I think he’s actually not an untalented guy, but he’s lazily coasting on fumes in down-market material like this; when Donny Osmond (!) pops up in enthusiastic goofball mode and Lawrence screws up his face in confusion and disdain, he might as well just go ahead and exclaim, “White people?! They’re different!” That’s the level of comedy for which this movie seems to be aiming.

This is obviously a paycheck gig for director Roger Kumble (Just Friends), who must be wondering what happened to the trajectory of his career after the moderately warm reception that 1999’s Cruel Intentions — his adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’ oft-reworked novel, Dangerous Liaisons — received. His involvement means at least the set-ups will be somewhat professionally handled, but not much else looks worth recommending this showcase of pantomiming. After all, in just over two minutes in the trailer, they also find a way to work in not one but two taserings. Well done, though I’m not sure how Andrew “Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” Meyer feels about that…

The online trailer for The Signal, a low-fi horror flick releasing February 22 from Magnolia Pictures, is an effective piece of genre rib-nudging. Like Pulse and the recent One Missed Call (and The Ring, before them), The Signal is a film that channels and wraps the current anxiety of our times around a techno-phobic premise. When a garbled television transmission makes half of all those who see it turn into stark-raving-mad killers, all bets are off. Like the recent Cloverfield, the movie seems to revolve around a couple of young lovers trying to navigate their way through the madness and reunite safely. It may not have the marketing muscle to punch through, and heck, it may even be crappy in the final analysis, but the trailer does its job, evoking dread in decently effective fashion.

The trailer for Will Ferrell’s new flick, Semi-Pro, is online, and though Andre Benjamin is definitely underused and I just kind of smiled the first time I saw it, it’s something that’s undeniably growing on me. The absurdity quotient is high (ergo the “tender meat” comment at the end), enough so to summon generally pleasant memories of Anchorman, and the “basketball trance” bit reminds me of the classic Saturday Night Live “Palm Beach” sketch, in which Ferrell’s impression of an attention-deficit-challenged President Bush devolves to the point of him playing with a ball of yarn, like a kitten. Also, I just can’t stop singing/saying, over and over, “Get the funk outta my face… get… the… funk… outta my face!” Again, click here for the full trailer.

The trailer for Adam Sandler’s new summer comedy, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, is online, and if one strains to erase the sour taste/memories of last summer’s dreadful I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, there’s actually a chance they could muster up a modicum of enthusiasm for this flick. Costarring Emmanuelle Chriqui, Rob Schneider, Nick Swardson, the usual assortment of other Sandler players and seemingly a bevy of hot young chicks in day-player roles (check the full credits on IMDb if you doubt), the film is about a Mossad agent who, tired of years of fighting with the Palestinians, fakes his death so he can pursue his true passion — hairdressing.

Unlike so many comedies with goofball haircuts simply for the sake of forced mock laughs (I’m looking in your general direction, Ben Stiller), Sandler’s ‘do here (a more stylized version of the mop he sported in Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me) seems to work nicely. Now, Schneider in another ethnic role (what, did he and Sandler catch Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s a couple years ago?) and jokes about Hezbollah terrorist supply phone lines? We’ll see… the jury’s still out. Directed by Dennis Dugan — a fruitful Sandler collaborator on Happy Gilmore, decidedly less so on Big Daddy and Little Nicky* — Zohan gets points for the fact that it’s co-scripted by Sandler, Saturday Night Live veteran Robert Smigel and comedy man-of-the-moment Judd Apatow. That, for the moment, counterbalances the fact that the trailer summons up memories of Blow Dry, Beauty Shop and the aforementioned Chuck & Larry, not films of which I necessarily want to be reminded.

* UPDATE/CORRECTION: Yes, per the comment below, Steven Brill, not Dugan, is actually the director responsible for Little Nicky, which for some reason must have been on my brain recently. Still, Dugan did perpetrate I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, which I understand is currently being investigated by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The trailer for What Happens in Vegas, Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher’s new comedy which hits theaters May 16, is now online, and essentially tells us what a big, ha-ha, middle-of-the-road laffer it’s going to be.

The story centers on two strangers with recent trauma wounds (one’s been dumped, one fired… by his dad) who head to Sin City, party hearty, and then awaken to discover they’ve gotten married. Naturally, as they’re about to split, one wins a
huge jackpot after playing a slot machine with the other’s quarter; a battle for the $3 million payout ensues, with the newlyweds — egged on by their respective best friends, Lake Bell (Over Her Dead Body) and Rob Corddry (The Heartbreak Kid) — devising
ever-escalating schemes to undermine each other and get their hands on
the money.

The pairing of these two stars seems a natural idea, and their sense of timing and the respective comfort levels that they convey will help make things bearable, I suspect. Still, I can’t help but feel that What Happens in Vegas would be a much more interesting (and potentially funny) movie if it weren’t full of the sort of posed comedy (e.g., Kutcher holding up the toilet lid at trailer’s end) we’ve come to expect from such mainstream releases, and didn’t have the pair eventually falling for one another. The psychological temperature of the country is ripe for a ruthless, War of the Roses-type battle of the sexes — something which the ending of The Heartbreak Kid reached for, but didn’t pull off.

The trailer for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, written by and starring Jason Segel, along with Kristen Bell, is online and in theaters, and it’s a nice tweak of tortured, post-breakup masculinity.

Segel (above right) plays Peter Bretter, a guy who gets dumped by his TV star girlfriend, then finds his Hawaiian vacation of intended psychological escape rudely interrupted when it turns out he’s at the same resort as that of Bell’s Sarah and her new beau, bad boy singer Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). The trailer slyly evokes Caddyshack in nicely gentle fashion (courtesy of Kenny Loggins’ “I’m All Right”) and capably works in its bit players (Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader), all while not overselling the inevitable rebound relationship with Mila Kunis.

I appreciated, too, the fact that Brand’s work wasn’t (presented as, at least) flaming, over-the-top caricature; Jesus, to think what a younger Ben Stiller would have done with the role. And, downmarket demo-baiting appeal aside, the “pearl necklace” bit at the trailer’s conclusion is nicely underplayed — the bow on top being Segel’s guilty-as-charged shrug.

The short teaser trailer for Mamma Mia!, this year’s screen adaptation of the hit stage musical based around songs of ABBA, is online, and I gather has been so for some time. For me, it elicits a big ol’ shrug. It’s the story of an 18-year-old (Amanda Seyfried), on the eve of her own nuptials, trying to discern her biological father — one of three former suitors (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard) of her mother (Meryl Streep) — but it’s set in Greece, which unfortunately brings back more memories of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin than The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Look, I enjoyed the ever-loving flip out of Muriel’s Wedding, but this seems like a mushy, pre-chewed packaging of the most worn, threadbare elements of Lost in Translation, Definitely, Maybe and a couple other fairer-sex, multi-generational and/or travelogue romances that I’m forgetting precisely because they’re so forgettable. Maybe the music carries the day. I just know that I can appreciate ABBA, and I’m still not tingling with anticipation.

So the trailer for Wanted, Universal’s big, summertime, action-happy assassins tale starring James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie, elicits intrigue and shrugs in almost equal fashion. It also includes narration from costar Morgan Freeman. Really? Isn’t that, like… totally a cliché by now? I won’t likely be catching this weekend’s Meet the Spartans, but I’m pretty sure the Date Movie guys will be honing in on that device of faux-solemnity shortly, if they haven’t already.

The English language debut of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, who crafted the edge-dancing, apocalyptic fantasy action thrillers Night Watch and Day Watch, Wanted seems to have style in spades, no doubt. And there may or may not be a really hot love scene between its stars. But isn’t this just destined to play on a double bill with Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and seemingly made entirely for that reason? And also, isn’t this story basically just a slightly more grown-up version of the plot from Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker? Just sayin’…

The trailer for Definitely, Maybe, opening from Universal on a crowded Valentine’s Day weekend, is up online and in theaters, and it paints a picture of sunny personalities running free through fields of daisies, metaphorically speaking. Written and directed by Adam Brooks, who made 2001’s wretched The Invisible Circus, but also penned Practical Magic, the relatively harmless Wimbledon, and 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, the film tells the story of a guy (Ryan Reynolds) who, on the eve of a divorce, tells his daughter (Abigail Breslin) the story of the three women (Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz and Isla Fisher) with whom he’s had relationships in his life, leaving her (and the audience) trying to guess who her mother is.

We can eliminate Weisz right off the bat, so I’m thinking it has to be Fisher — both because of one fleeting but key revelation in the trailer, and because she’s pegged as the hottest riser of the remaining two. One thing is clear, though: despite being a bit too young (31) to convincingly have a 10- or 11-year-old daughter, the sly charm of Reynolds (witness the swallowed line regarding threesomes) will again be key to this enterprise. The art for the movie’s press kit (and its poster, where horizontal design influence is evident) is billing it as “from the makers of Notting Hill and Love Actually,” and if Definitely, Maybe can capture the varying tonalities of particularly the latter, then it could be a lovely cross-generational and cross-gender mini-hit if Doug Liman’s Jumper fails to catch on.

The premise holds the possibility of great fun — desperate for success, a struggling actor kidnaps members of the public and
forces them to perform in a bizarre movie intended to make him a household
name — but the trailer for The Garth Method doesn’t do a particularly good job of selling director Gregory Pakis’ film, which is an Australian mockumentary allegedly based on a true story.

The story posits that in 2001, unemployed actor Garth Petridis was imprisoned for
one of the most unusual crimes in Australian history, described above. Shot on Super 16mm and starring the writer-director, Pakis’ movie is a combination of Petridis’ “real” video diaries leading up to his decision to commit his strange crime and a recreation of his comic struggle to become an actor. Some zippy music and Pakis’ eerie similarity to Tim Roth notwithstanding, there’s no cleanly, deeply carved comedic throughline here; it’s a shrug that doesn’t deliver on the movie’s concept. Still, I like to think of this character as the Down Under equivalent of Dennis Woodruff. Los Angelenos know what I’m talking about…

Danny and Oxide Pang’s The Eye, from 2005, was a seriously unnerving piece of work, and the trailer for the American remake, starring Jessica Alba and releasing February 1 from Lionsgate, scores big points for going wordless. In today’s cinematic landscape of endless chatter, it’s a bold, welcome play. I’m not sure about some of those apparent pyrotechnics, though. Time will tell, I suppose…

The trailer for Fox Walden’s Nim’s Island, releasing in April of next year, is now online. A kid-friendly picture starring Little Miss Sunshine‘s Abigail Breslin (sister of Spencer, a friend of mine would insist I point out), Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler, it seems kinda dispiritingly broad, but what’re you gonna do? Also, I think Butler may have been hanging out with Mike Myers, or at the very least watching the “Fat Bastard” portions of the last two Austin Powers flicks. I’m sure it’ll even out a bit in the wash, though, especially given the participation of Foster. Clearly, this is a movie for the Bridge to Terabithia set, which rang up an impressive $82 million last spring, en route to $130+ million worldwide.

The trailer for writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth — the Sundance-minted flick about a high school student (Jess Weixler) who “experiences both the pitfalls and the power of being a living example of the
vagina dentata myth” — is a great… well, effective, let’s say, evocation of anxiety and mood, particularly its first minute, with Weixler nervously settling into her doctor’s examination chair.

But I’ve been putting off seeing this film, and not only because it’ll likely have me grabbing my junk for 90 minutes or so thereafter. It just seems a bit precious, this concept, and the trailer doesn’t answer one way or another the big, lurking question — does Teeth have anything going for it other than the cheeky-naughty factor at its core? Otherwise it could be this year’s Hard Candy — a shrewdly packaged but essentially pat, unconvincingly facile narrative reversal wrapped up in profundity’s clothing.

The trailer for 27 Dresses (20th Century Fox, January 11), Katherine Heigl’s Knocked Up follow-up, is online and in theaters, and my solitary reaction is… yay, Judy Greer! Actually, that’s not true, I have a second reaction as well: Maroon 5 was born to write music for trailers like this. Wait just a moment… if I squeeze my head a bit a third thought pops out: Edward Burns is now playing the rakish, wildly desirable yet completely unattainable boss — in short, the “Daniel Cleaver” role — in movies?

So after a good half dozen or so sobriquets, the trailer for the simply-titled Rambo, which opens January 25, 2008 is online, and to my mind it elicits mostly shrugs. The action quotient is there, I guess, but the interstitial title card stuff (“In the heart of the jungle… blood will flow… and a warrior will come”) comes across as dated and/or something you’d expect for a movie starring Jon Cena. I was a late (and enthusiastic) convert of Rocky Balboa, it’s true, and I’d much rather see this sort of autumnal career arc from
Sylvester Stallone — involved, hands-on, really trying — than a flicker-fade of
more block-headed genre tripe. Still, I’m even more skeptical about his ability to tap into melancholic regret and life lessons learned with the character of Rambo, who is a relic of Reagan-era machismo in not insignificant ways, than I was with Rocky. This trailer doesn’t provide a lot of the “soul-searching fight within himself” that Stallone has previously mentioned. Here’s hoping it’s at least a little bit of a bait-and-switch…

Co-directed by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue, the father of the modern television talk show, the documentary
Body of War offers forth an unsanitized account of one young man’s evolution from enlisted
soldier to anti-war veteran. The film’s trailer is about what one might reasonably expect, though a couple things stand out: 1) the effectively plaintive rumble of Eddie Vedder, who contributes two original songs to the production, 2) West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd’s impassioned Senate floor speech from October of 2002 (where was the network news coverage of this?), and 3) the film’s strikingly clear cinematography, including outdoor segments in Washington, D.C. The
runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto
Film Festival, Body of War screens at AFI Fest in Los Angeles on Tuesday, November 6 at 7:30 p.m.