Some Hindu leaders are up in arms over a crazy little thing called The Love Guru.
The forthcoming Mike Myers comedy, not due out until June, already has some religious and cultural leaders calling foul on the film. A handful of Hindu higher-ups are voicing concerns, based on the trailer and promotions already released, that the movie will unfairly play into stereotypes and potentially ridicule their beliefs.
"The movie appeared to be lampooning Hinduism and Hindus and using Hindu terms frivolously," Rajan Zed, president of the Nevada-based Universal Society of Hinduism, told India's Hindustan Times.
The Hindu group Shri Ramayan Pracharini Sabha issued a statement saying "that portrayal of Hindu characters like buffoons is not acceptable."
Zed has said the film will lead unenlightened audiences to believe "most of us are like that."
What that is: a flowing-haired, long-bearded, caftan-wearing, sitar-strumming guru played, as usual, to exaggerated comic effect by Myers.
In the film, Myers character, Guru Pitka, is not given a specific religion but rather an amalgamation of various Eastern religions. On Love Guru's MySpace page, he refers to himself as "his holiness...a spiritual teacher with no one faith." He has a penchant for yoga and his mantra is "Mariska Hargitay."
The film's studio, Paramount Pictures, says it is working to allay the fears of Hindu leaders. A studio rep says Love Guru will be screened for Zed and others, once the film is completed.
The studio also said made note that the film was hardly meant to be taken as a documentary, calling it a "nondenominational comedy" and "a satire created in the same spirit as Austin Powers."
In the movie, Guru Pitka, "the second best guru in India," is offered $2 million to head West and heal a star hockey player's broken heart so he can get back to the game and win his team the Stanley Cup.
Jessica Alba, Verne Troyer, Justin Timberlake, Deepak Chopra and Ben Kingsley also star in the film.
It isn't the first time a Myers project has drawn ire from the Hindu community.
In Vanity Fair's 1999 Hollywood issue, published in April of that year, Myers dressed up as a Hindu diety for a photo shoot with David LaChapelle. After a stream of protests and negative press, both the photographer and the magazine, in an editor's note published two months later, apologized for any offense.