Eat, Pray, Love, the Movie

It’s not a complete screenplay, so I don’t know that you can judge the results so harshly when the foundation is flawed, but so many flawed pics are produced, I’m not sure why the haters have come on full force. There are some really nice acting bits from Billy Crudup, Viola Davis, and Javier Bardem (I love that that meaty, emotional face!), and Julia Roberts is able to project a palpable sense of loneliness in the character. The spiritual aspect of the story is somewhat wasted, because I don’t really think of Julia Roberts as a spiritual presence (or believable as a writer). She’s like a…movie star. Someone like her in this “everyday woman” story is a little like, “Huh, oh look, models suffer too.” Here is a list of both my favorite and least favorite things about this movie; some entries could go on either list so, I just mush them up together here:

1) The scenery – gorgeous.
2) Weak on the food porn shots. (This is your chance to make a Crate and Barrel catalogue come to life! Don’t blow it!) (The best food porn shot of all time is the sandwich Adam Sandler makes in Spanglish -– when he/someone slices through and the yellow yoke floods the plate? Forget it.)
3) The moment before her journey when she closes her eyes and says “I want to marvel at something again” – it’s a little…gross.
4) Javier Bardem weeping when he says good-bye to his 19-year-old son (I was like, oh god, that’s how Husband and I are going to be. Baby is going to be so embarrassed.)
5) Any scene where everyone is paying homage to the Indian guru (only because me and Nancy know the actress who was cast as the guru, and it was weird to see everyone worshiping her)
6) Best lines: “Has anyone told you you look like James Taylor?” and “I’m so all over the place I feel like Liza Minnelli.”
7) The moment she cries to Ketut, her Indoneisian guru, “you’ve healed me, you’ve brought me back to myself.” (That moment, I have to say, elicited a loud guffaw from my body – didn’t mean to let it get so out of hand.)

There! I summed up the entire movie for you. You can stay home now if you like. You’re welcome, America.

7 Replies to “Eat, Pray, Love, the Movie”

  1. oh booby, you have a point, but it doesn’t bother me. you can talk to nk about it too. i think probably think this way b/c i think suffering knows no bounds. it can be like our avatar discussion all over again

  2. haha — actually it bothers me less than nnk, but i do abhor all the middle aged white women descending on bali for a spiritual experience. there was an interesting article in the times about it.

  3. what? first of all, it is true — there is a plethora of stories of white people traveling to a different setting and finding themselves. i think it would be funny if we wrote a story about a nonwhite visiting a white community to become enlightened, and i get why nnk is annoyed by the whole adventure, but i feel that’s the role of an artist — quit the job and go to a place where’s there’s no internet so the rest of us don’t have to. i actually really liked the book, b/c the woman, as annoying as she is to some people (and she only bugged me in her followup book, not this eat pray stuff) can write like a fiend. and rich white people get depressed and lonely. what are you going to do? i actually don’t think travels help with someone is that mental. you can’t run from your issues, they follow you, but a trip to bali and finding javiar bardem is so much more dramatic than years of therapy, you feel me?

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