To say Elizabeth Gilbert's globe-trotting memoir, Eat Pray Love, was a smash hit would be an understatement. It was pimped by Oprah Winfrey and translated into over thirty languages.. It also spawned a slew of merchandise like Eat Pray Love jewelry, Eat Pray Love journals, Eat Pray Love perfume, and even Eat Pray Love lip gloss. No word on Eat Pray Love: The Flamethrower. Obviously it touched a nerve with women around the world and a feature film version was inevitable.
Julia Roberts plays the on-screen version of Gilbert, a freelance journalist stuck in an unhappy marriage with her husband, Steven (Billy Crudup). After the divorce, she engages in a rebound relationship with a sensitive young actor named David (James Franco). Still not content, Gilbert wants to go on a year long quest to find herself and her sympathetic publisher (Viola Davis) provides an advance to cover expenses.
The first leg of the journey takes her to Rome where she indulges in rich Italian cuisine. She even learns Italian from a hunk with the unlikely name of Luca Spaghetti. After four months of food, wine, and friends, Gilbert heads to India where she'll meditate in an ashram for the 'Pray' section of her adventure. Here, she meets Tulsi (Rushita Singh), a young girl readying for an arranged marriage, and Richard (Richard Jenkins), a recovering alcoholic from Texas who imparts barbs of wisdom on the soul-searching protagonist. After another four months, Gilbert concludes her voyage in Bali in order to study with a ninth-generation medicine man (Hadi Subiyanto) she met on an earlier trip. It is here that Gilbert hopes to find a balance between life and spirituality when the 'Love' portion of the film kicks in. She falls for an exceedingly swarthy Javier Bardem as a Brazilian businessman and fellow divorcee.
As a 30-year old male, I am hardly the targeted audience for Eat Pray Love. I haven't read the original book either. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why it managed to captivate its audience enough to stay on the New York Times bestseller list for 187 weeks. Whatever the reasons, it didn't come across in the big-screen adaptation. The film's failures certainly don't fall on the shoulders of the cast. Julia Roberts does a great job of being Julia Roberts. When you hire her for the lead, it's because she's the embodiment of the beautiful Hollywood starlet and she can connect with movie-goers. Billy Crudup, James Franco, and Javier Bardem are all good as the men in her life, despite being relatively thin roles. Viola Davis and Richard Jenkins bring an additional layer of gravitas whenever they are present. Davis always seems to carry things to another level no matter how small her parts are. In Jenkins' case, his speech about the reasons why he's at the ashram is engrossing and nearly hijacks the entire movie.
The problem is the film lacks the raw substance necessary to truly latch onto it. Ryan Murphy, the creator of Nip/Tuck and Glee, directed the picture and co-wrote the script with Jennifer Salt. He does a fair job technically, but is unable to imbue the story with any sort of genuine emotional resonance. When we first meet Gilbert, all we know is that she is unhappy for whatever vague reasons. Once Eat Pray Love launches into a series of exotic locations, it becomes a cross between a travelogue and a reality show on Food Network. It's hard to sympathize with a well-to-do New Yorker who's getting paid to go on vacation. Someone who's biggest problem seems to be being unable to fit into her jeans after eating too much pizza. As the film concludes in Bali, it shifts into a standard romantic comedy as Roberts and Bardem pull a meet cute after he nearly runs her over. The conclusion flies in the face of the one of the film's central themes. Gilbert had defined herself based on her relationships and learned she didn't need a man to be happy. So of course, she finds one to literally ride off into the sunset with. Finally, the film is just way too long, clocking in at 133 minutes with a 146 minute director's cut hitting DVD and Blu-Ray. There's just too much eating, praying, and loving.
Eat Pray Love is a shiny, polished production set in good-looking locations populated by good-looking people. It's a chick flick through and through, but one that is not nearly as soulless as the Sex and the City movies. I'm sure someone else will give it three or four stars, but I didn't find it nearly as appetizing.
Rating: * ½ (*****)
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