Hollywood has finally come up with a mainstream movie starring a South Asian, and unfortunately for all, that movie is Universal’s The Guru.

Jimi Mistry stars as Ramu Gupta, who comes to America with the hopes of becoming a movie star. He accidentally gets introduced to the world of adult film and meets Sharona, (Heather Graham) who imparts her sexual wisdom to him. Ramu in turn uses this information to become the “sexual guru” of the upper-west side, encouraged by the wealthy Lexi (Marisa Tomei.)

Though the movie claims to be sensitive to the stereotypes South Asians face in film and in life, it nevertheless resorts to those same stereotypes over and over again to illicit cheap laughs. The notorious, "don't get your turban in a twist" line generated a chuckle from the audience; however, it is those kinds of jokes that simply perpetuate negative South Asian stereotypes in pop culture. Perhaps I wouldn't be taking those jokes so seriously had I not been made acutely aware that the actors themselves are blind to their own ignorance. On The Guru’s official website, Graham said of the dance sequences in the film, “I got to be in an Indian dance sequence which was like a Hindu movie, a Bollywood movie, and I got to sing in Hindu.”

One of the main themes that the filmmakers are pushing is that The Guru is a fusion of Hollywood and Bollywood (India’s equivalent to Hollywood). The problem with this mix is that Indian movies cannot be viewed under the same lens as American movies. Indian Americans view Bollywood movies on an altogether different plane than American ones. They appreciate Bollywood movies as unique to their culture, something that cannot be incorporated easily in an essentially completely different genre. The Guru, however, uses the musical numbers seen in Indian movies in a way that cheapens the spirit in which they are meant to be used and turns it into a cheesy display of colors and costumes. Screenwriter Tracy Jackson commented on the website that The Guru is a “very real film about very real people, not a sort of sappy, sentimental musical.” However, The Guru is neither real, nor sappy. To use those terms would imply that the audience cared about the characters and what happened to them.

All cultural issues I have with The Guru aside, it is still a terrible movie on its own merit — it simply has no redeeming qualities. The dialogue is weak, the directing is mediocre at best, and the acting is non-existent. The real disappointment is Tomei, who just might have been the only one who could have saved this movie from itself, yet somehow couldn’t pull it together this time. The interesting thing is that the underlying joke of The Guru is making fun of adult films, when the movie itself is nothing better than the average porn flick. It features gratuitous nudity, a weak plot, and Graham herself has, as always, the emotional range of a porn star.

As for the future of South Asians in Hollywood, what we really need now is a mainstream American movie that stars South Asians in roles typically played by white actors. As for The Guru, there is really only one thing left to say: don’t see it.