This story of personal journey
Does not make all that great a movie
There's some great food porn
Overall I'm torn
On whether this flick's worth your rupees.
Full disclosure: Julia Roberts stayed at one of our honeymoon hotels in Bali while shooting the "love" part, so I entered the theater with more than your average amount of goodwill for the film.
Fuller disclosure: I still didn't love the movie.
It's based on the autobiographical book by Liz Gilbert, a woman who loses herself in a marriage and sets out to visit three different destinations (Italy, India and Bali) to find herself again. Along the way, she befriends a spunky younger woman and is mentored by a wise older man... three times in a row.
Eat Pray Love is sumptuously shot, generally well-acted and has some powerful moments, but the whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts. Each section feels like a start-to-finish mini-movie, which is a little jarring when you're charting a yearlong journey of self-discovery. After "Eating" her way through Italy, where she meets fabulous friends, devours amazing food, and self-actualizes about her body image, it's odd that when she arrives in India, it feels as if none of it has happened – Liz is back to the morose and withdrawn mess she was when she started.
On top of that, the movie absolutely grinds to a halt in "Pray." Second act problems aren't unique for films, but when forty minutes of your movie revolves around someone psyching themselves up to meditate, you're in serious trouble. Things pick up a bit in Bali, although that's basically because the movie morphs into a fairly traditional romance. A couple of complications ensue, but the ending is nothing that you won't see coming.
Eat Pray Love... Watch? I'm gonna say cable. Netflix if you're invested in the book. It's certainly enjoyable, but also not memorable.
No comments:
Post a Comment