The film adaptation of 'Eat Pray Love' is an empty travelogue

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The film adaptation of ‘Eat Pray Love’ is an empty travelogue

Josh Bell

Wed, Aug 11, 2010 (5:51 p.m.)

Eat Pray Watch (a more interesting movie).

Eat Pray Love

Julia Roberts, James Franco, Javier Bardem; Directed by Ryan Murphy; Rated PG-13
Beyond the Weekly: Eat Pray Love; IMDb: Eat Pray Love; Rotten Tomatoes: Eat Pray Love

Based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s enormously popular memoir, Eat Pray Love casts Julia Roberts as the author, who walked away from her upscale New York City literary life for a year to find herself by carbo-loading in Italy, meditating in India and boning a hot Brazilian dude in Bali. Ryan Murphy’s film version of the story is relentlessly superficial, a slick, empty travelogue propped up only by Roberts’ natural charisma. Her still-luminous smile and radiant charm can almost make you care about Gilbert’s narcissistic rich-white-lady problems. Still, this supposed journey of self-discovery is mostly conflict-free, and the intense emotional moments are presented in tidy packages with one-dimensional supporting characters. The lessons Gilbert learns are trite, obvious and entirely free of complexity or insight. She could have achieved the same effect by staying in New York and buying a bag of fortune cookies.

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