BY BOB STRAUSS >FILM CRITIC

As the great swami of comedy Judd Apatow has been teaching us for years now, movies are a lot funnier when they're built around something resembling human behavior.

So back to the mirth monastery with you, Mike Myers!

Myers may not be voicing Shrek in "The Love Guru," but this weird mess that he conceived, produced and wears a wig in is no less cartoonish. Working a concept that only a Canadian could come up with - it's a satire of New Age self-improvement blather and a hockey comedy - Myers makes a dozen bad jokes for every one that's successful.

Imagine how much more hilarious people actually wrestling with inner turmoil could have been - especially when they're carrying hockey sticks.

"Guru" seems to be headed there for about two minutes, promising an insightful probe into the spiritual marketing mind. Myers' Guru Pitka is unfulfilled because Deepak Chopra gets on "Oprah" and he doesn't. This despite the Avis of Indian advisors having his own big ol' meditation center in the Hollywood Hills and a devoted A-to-D-List of followers chanting his "Mariska Hargitay" mantra. (This includes good sport Mariska Hargitay, one of many celebs Myers mesmerized into cameos as themselves.)

So far, so amusing. But then Myers picks up a sitar and, grinning bigger than Austin Powers, leads us into a Bollywood production number of Dolly Parton's "9 to 5." Guess that's worth laughing at if you're so inclined, but it sets a jarring, off-the-wall tone that dissipates focus for the rest of the movie. Guess no one involved, like first-time director Marco Schnabel, knew how to meditate.

The nominal story has Pitka trying to help Toronto Maple Leaf Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) get back on his game after the latter's wife (Meagan Good) dumps him for a French Canadian L.A. King (Justin Timberlake, especially ridiculous in a movie that's nothing but).

The plot's just a thin line, however, on which Myers hangs lots of goofy wordplay, endless penis jokes and relentless abuse of little Verne Troyer (the Austin Powers films' Mini-Me, who gets to talk this time as the unlikely coach of the Leafs).

There are some clever flashbacks to Pitka's youth in India, and one involving urine-soaked mop-slapping. And Stephen Colbert operates on a whole other, smarter comic plane as an utterly unhinged TV commentator. But that's about it for true hilarity in a movie that attempts it every three seconds, on average.

In fact, Malco and Jessica Alba, as the team's owner and the cackling guru's love interest, come off best solely by dint of being the movie's straight men, and therefore the only relatively believable characters in it.

An argument could be made that Myers tried to explode ethnic stereotypes throughout "Love Guru," but its a hard one to defend when so many jokes are based on appearances and accents. The handful of Hindus who've been complaining for months about the movie's very existence should know that not a single one of their deities is ever mentioned, and Pitka's philosophy, called DRAMA, is completely made-up pop-psych pabulum.

The real insult to higher consciousness is that "Love Guru's" humor is about as mature as strained carrots.

 >review

THE LOVE GURU

PG-13: language, sexual and bathroom humor, drug use, mild violence.

Starring: Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Romany Malco, Justin Timberlake, Meagan Good, Ben Kingsley, Verne Troyer, Stephen Colbert.

Director: Marco Schnabel.

Running time: 1 hr. 28 min.

Playing: Citywide.

In a nutshell: Hit-and-miss (mostly miss) gagfest about Eastern self-improvement teachers, hockey and really juvenile sex jokes.