The screenwriter William Goldman famously said about Hollywood, "nobody knows anything." The same thing apparently can be said about yoga.

At least that's what amounts to the message of Enlighten Up!, a wandering mess of a movie in which a yoga-trained documentarian takes a newbie around the world to trace his spiritual journey.

The neophyte, an unemployed New York journalist named Nick Rosen, is remarkably nonplused as he flies around to be exposed to Kundalina Yoga, Dharma Yoga, "Laughing Yoga," and "Yoga For Regular Guys" (run by former WWF/TNA wrestler Diamond Dallas Page, who announces he'd break a chair over anybody he hears chanting).

In the last act, he's taken to a Northern Indian ashram and the closest thing the yoga world apparently has to a superstar, B.K.S. Iyengar. Taking Rosen to him for enlightenment is the equivalent of a duffer going to Tiger Woods for help with his approach shots.

Weirdly, it's the documentarian who seems to unravel throughout. After all, it's her idea in the first place -- not Nick's -- to try and ascertain by expert witness whether yoga is just a really good stretching exercise, a path to inner peace and self-knowledge, or indeed a path to Godhead itself. She's to be found at one point sobbing on a rooftop (cameras conveniently in place), and constantly complains about the lack of spiritual movement in Nick. It becomes clear fairly early that this is a movie about her, and Nick is merely along for the ride. (Hey, why not? Who would turn down a free trip?)

For someone with seven years of yoga training, Churchill is remarkably cynical and doubting about something to which she's devoted so much of herself. Far from an advertisement for an activity indulged in by 20 million North Americans, Enlighten Up! is really only missing the shouting commentary of debunker Penn Jillette to be a lengthy episode of the Penn & Teller series Bullsh--!

For example, various yogis are asked how far back yoga dates -- a simple question. The answers vary from 40,000 years to less than a hundred (one academic says the version practised here is pretty much a 20th century Western invention, which is easy to believe when you see so much expert witness coming from white guys with New York accents and fake Indian names).

What's clear is that you don't need any kind of diploma to declare yourself a yoga master, and you get out of it what you put in. Those who just want to be more flexible and fit do so. Those who want to see God, invariably do so (one claims to have seen him "a hundred times").

At times, Enlighten Up! is like the Mike Myers movie The Love Guru, only a lot funnier. My favourite yogi was one Norman Allen, whose favourite repeated admonishment to neophyte Nick was "F--- yourself!" He would then laugh and explain that that was Tantric advice.

I'll have to remember that for future transcendant moments with the unenlightened.
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