Eat Pray Love

Have you ever wished for more in your life? A different partner? Freedom from the rat race? The courage to try something new? More time to spend on yourself? Of course you have. Each of these lines of thought are by no means unique, with most members of the human race pondering their place in the world, and how they spend their short time in it, with relative frequency. Indeed, an entire industry of self improvement gurus peddling instant success schemes has sprung up around such thinking, fed by the incessant cycle of book titles and TV talk shows (including the inimitable Oprah Winfrey and her media empire, as well as the likes of Dr Phil, Ellen DeGeneres, and more). And now, the film industry has jumped into the fray, taking the most popular titles from the genre and churning out lightweight Hollywood features based on self help manuals and similarly themed memoirs, tailor made for the unhappy housewife set (see the comedic failures of How To Lose Friends And Alienate People and Yes Man, and the mass produced romance of He’s Just Not That Into You). The latest case in point is Eat Pray Love, based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 effort “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia”.

Starring America’s favourite actress Julia Roberts (last seen in Valentine’s Day and Duplicity) as the big screen incarnation of the author herself, Eat Pray Love opens with Liz Gilbert as a picture of success, complete with the house, husband (Billy Crudup, Public Enemies), and high-flying career as a travel writer to match. Yet despite having achieved all the trappings of modern middle-aged life (or mid thirties, the age the characters are meant to be despite Roberts residing in her mid forties in reality), Liz is unhappy. Cue a quick divorce and an affair with a young actor (James Franco, Milk), before Liz decides to leave the comfort of New York against the advice of her best friend Delia (Viola Davis, Doubt) to travel the world in search of that something she finds lacking. Spending four months apiece in Rome (pursuing the eating part of the film title), India (praying, of course, alongside Dear John‘s Richard Jenkins), and Bali (enter the obligatory love interest, played by Vicky Cristina Barcelona‘s Javier Bardem), Liz sets off seeking nothing but time to be herself, and emerges at the end a changed woman with the inner balance to eat, pray, love and enjoy life in equal measures.

If the above sounds like something you’ve seen before, it’s because you have. And if it sounds particularly dull and unexciting, that’s because it is. A mixture of every other similarly themed offering from the past two decades (including many from Roberts’ own career) with the travelogue format thrown in, Eat Pray Love is a standard rom-com wrapped in self indulgent, self important self discovery packaging. Yes, the scenery is picturesque, and yes, the supporting cast – particularly the underrated Jenkins – is top notch, however neither can compensate for yet another paint by numbers chick flick dressed up in cultured costuming (when culture clash comedy might be a more appropriate genre, given the number of gags that hinge upon the East meets West theme). Roberts dials up the charm with her trademark smile put into overdrive, and director Ryan Murphy (better known for his television work as the writer and creator of Nip/Tuck, Popular and Glee) tries hard to adapt the somewhat patronising material, however the feature clumsily dwindles into derivative sentimentality nonetheless (with Bardem’s subplot the only element with emotional resonance). A sure fire hit with the female audience despite its many maudlin misgivings, Eat Pray Love is a long and languid, trite and talky, feel good film for fans of the book, with little else on offer for those not so keen on jumping on the self help romantic comedy bandwagon.

Eat Pray Love opens in cinemas across the nation on October 7th, 2010.

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Tags: comedy, Eat Pray Love, films, Julia Roberts, memoir, movies, romance, self help