Eat Pray Love Movie Review
Review by The New Yorker
Eat Pray Love,” in which Julia Roberts plays the writer Elizabeth Gilbert—a divorcée looking for truth in highly photogenic locales—dribbles on for an eternity, sometimes intelligently and companionably, sometimes vacuously. But then, late in the film, Javier Bardem, unshaven, heavy-lidded, and friendly, arrives in a Jeep and runs the bicycling Roberts off the road near her Bali retreat. Toro ex machina. The movie suddenly stops dithering. Bardem apologizes, and pursues Roberts with that mixture of warmth and humor which makes him something of an irresistible force. “Eat Pray Love,” a quest for selfhood, ends as a conventional romantic story. After so many questions, so much travel, is that enough for us?
Gilbert’s 2006 autobiographical narrative (which has commas between the words) has become a kind of bible for the dissatisfied educated woman; it’s a much loved book, but virtually impossible to adapt faithfully—its appeal lies in Gilbert’s nattering voice. A New York-based writer of both fiction and nonfiction (“The Last American Man”), Gilbert takes us through her life at thirty-two.
Review by The Passionate Moviegoer
Perhaps you haven’t noticed but modern movies by, for and about women deal with one hugely dubious subject – self-involvement. It’s not exactly flattering and this new subgenre reached something of a nadir with Michael Patrick King’s wretched “Sex and the City 2,” which added a bizarre obsession with obscenely expensive shoes to the mix.
There’s no where to go but up, right?
Ryan Murphy’s film version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love” – retitled “Eat Pray Love” by Hollywood marketing – is something of an anti-”Sex and the City 2.” The heroine’s searching in this film is for her soul.
Not some designer label.
That makes a big difference – that and star Julia Roberts who reaches deep within herself to make the narcissism of this film’s heroine palatable.
Review by Week Rewind
Currently, the majority of film critics would like to eat the new Ryan Murphy movie, “Eat Pray Love,” and then leave it behind in some soiled restroom the following day. Not pleasant, but what they’re saying about the movie isn’t pleasant, either.
Mostly, they’re railing against the film’s premise. Though we’re in the middle of a recession, here is a movie that dares to be about a successful woman who ditches her marriage in an effort to find meaning in her life by taking a year off and traveling to different parts of the world.
In this economy, that’s kind of a joke for most of us, so I see their point. But then you have the movie itself, which does offer insight into what Americans view as having lived a full life, and how other cultures view the same subject.
Though many movies have explored Eastern culture and juxtaposed it against the American experience, there still is something to learn from “Eat Pray Love,” especially because it repeatedly challenges our culture and questions what’s important in life.
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