They should have named it "Eat Love," because that whole search for inner peace and balance ("Pray") that made Elizabeth Gilbert's travel memoir resonate with so many women has an awfully hard time translating itself to the movie screen.
Or perhaps it was just lost in the scenery, because "Eat Pray Love" is, if nothing else, absolutely gorgeous. The parties are gorgeous, the people are gorgeous, the meals are gorgeous and tiffany heart toggle bracelet the scenery (Rome! Bali!) is gorgeous. Plunk Julia Roberts down in the middle of it, and even the squalor in India is strangely appealing.
You would think this movie was inspired by the marriage of Architectural Digest and Travel Leisure magazine, officiated over by Psychology Today, rather than a hugely popular, observant memoir about divorce, depression and self-discovery.
Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on what you're looking for yourself. It could be said -- I'll say it right here -- that the film version of "Eat Pray Love" manages to be too much and too little at the same time. Roberts and friends stay true to many of Gilbert's words and experiences in an anecdotal way, but press a search for meaning through the Hollywood sausage maker, and you tend to lose the inner struggles that lift it above the banal.
Gilbert on the page is open, self-critical and often very funny. Roberts on the screen, even at 42, is too often a beautiful enigma. She only comes alive when happy -- her legendary smile still illuminates the entire theater. But when, as Liz Gilbert, she is being introspective, searching and doubting, we are left to fill in the blanks on her face.
There should be some credit due for at least trying to make a film for women -- argue among yourselves, but this is a film for women -- that speaks to wanting something different, and is not about shopping. Gilbert (the character) begins the movie married, with a handsome husband (Billy Crudup) and thriving career. In the grand scheme of things, it might seem petty and selfish that she is unhappy, that she wants to change, that she is not the person she wants to be -- "I have no pulse!" she cries.
Then, she tries to pray for the first time, in the vacant space of her big, elegant house, telling God, "I'm in serious trouble. I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do." The cynical observer could note that Gilbert has her health, friends, people who love her, and really, nothing to complain about.
But she is not complaining. She, like many, many before her, is seeking. For the truly spiritual and truly religious, hers is the ultimate quest, and it could have made a challenging film. Consider that, in what some deem a whiny and selfish move -- leaving her empty marriage -- she does what many much-admired spiritual people have done before, giving up the security of home to find a deeper meaning.
After all, Americans are constantly reminded handbags-0-9 they are too materialistic.
It would have played better, though if Julia/Liz didn't head out into the world with an apparently bottomless carry-on of wrinkle- free wardrobe changes, an invisible hairstylist and a no-limit credit card.
About that marriage she is fleeing: Crudup swings between oblivious and obnoxious, a guy who can't decide what he wants to be when he grows up, swinging between trendy careers and then -- in a whim that pushes his bride over the edge -- deciding to go back to school so he
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