Eat Pray Love Reviews

I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me

I've always admired Julia Roberts, and was wondering how she would transition to a more mature actress. Not well. Why in the world would she have read this abomination of a script, and said, "Yes, I want to do that movie!"? And the other fine actors must have agreed because Roberts signed on. All the talent in this film can't correct the atrocious script. The film has four chapters, each of which introduces a new male character in a different part of the world, and charts her dysfunctional response to each. It's impossible, I suspect, to have developed each character and story all in a two hour movie. It was so hollow, not only did I feel nothing for the characters (except Bardem), but I felt ambivalence toward them. Lots of narcissistic angst over nothing. The movie had nothing to say.

Admittedly, this was something that I had quite an interest towards when it was released seeing as it stars the gorgeous Julia Roberts, Oscar winner Javier Bardem, Billy Crudup and James Franco so it was pretty much the whole cast that caught my attention. However, when I watched it, I have not seen a film as empty as this in quite a while. It just had no soul and there was no message or inspiration involved very much at all. We were expecting an adventure of a woman going on a trip to places over the world and experiencing a new life but this was no adventure! This felt more like a woman who just got bored and wanted to go from one country to the next.


Liz Gilbert (Roberts) had everything a modern woman is supposed to dream of having - a husband, a house, a successful career - yet like so many others, she found herself lost, confused, and searching for what she really wanted in life. Newly divorced and at a crossroads, Gilbert steps out of her comfort zone, risking everything to change her life, embarking on a journey around the world that becomes a quest for self-discovery. In her travels, she discovers the true pleasure of nourishment by eating in Italy; the power of prayer in India, and, finally and unexpectedly, the inner peace and balance of true love in Bali. Well, Julia Roberts, you may have looked extremely HOT in Eat Pray Love but what in the hell happened? I just couldn't get into her character very much at all but there were some moments where she was quite good. Javier Bardem was fairly decent, though. It was quite weird seeing him play a gentleman where he is best known playing a murdering psycho (No Country For Old Men).


Ryan Murphy perhaps directed this one like he tried so hard to make a successful film but unfortunately due to some of those flaws especially the film duration, he failed. I do like light-hearted romantic films but this is one of the very few that I have seen where I just couldn't feel any strong chemistry between Liz and any of her partners: neither David nor Felipe. I think the biggest problem I have with Eat Pray Love is that it was WAY too long! It really dragged on and that unfortunately made the script very cheesy throughout pretty much the whole film.


Overall, Eat Pray Love is a poor attempt at trying to make an adventure feel real. Julia Roberts, I adore you and you may have looked really hot in this film but as far as acting goes, she can do so much better. This really is for girls more than boys like pretty much all chick flicks. Guys, avoid this one!

The most puzzling thing about EAT PRAY LOVE is the fact that the "Eat" segment turns out to be the most complex, well-developed, emotionally affecting part of the movie. The "Pray" segment is shockingly unfocused and superficial, while the "Love" segment is rushed and haphazard. This is the type of film in which the thematic depth should've actually escalated as it moved from one stage of its protagonist's journey to the next, but alas, the exact opposite happens.

Liz (Julia Roberts) feels like she hasn't dedicated enough time to make herself happy and that she got married too soon. So, she divorces her current husband and starts a fling with the much-younger David (James Franco) to see if maybe he'll infuse some life into her and get her out of the doldrums. Though she's still conflicted about possible feelings for David, she decides she'll have to do something much more drastic to achieve an emotional turnaround, so she decides to go on a trip to Italy, then India and finally Bali. The three verbs in the film's title are appropriate because they represent the way that Liz tries to get in touch with her inner self: in Italy, she savors some incredible food in and sees beautiful places; in India, she secludes herself in a religious haven and tries to get her spirituality moving forward; in Bali, she meets Felipe (Javier Bardem), who seems to be just as emotionally dissatisfied as her, and (as you'll have predicted by now) love supposedly ensues.

The Italy segment of EAT PRAY LOVE is a wonder to look at. It may not be anything great in the dramatic scale, but the characters that Liz gets to meet are a joy to get to know, and she even visits a few places that aren't commonly showcased in other films shot in Italy. Things get incredibly worse once we move to India, though. The 2008 Best Picture Oscar winner SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE was a true love letter to that country, which certainly can't be said of this movie; there's no intention whatsoever to highlight the Indian landscape. I understand that Italy is more conventionally beautiful than India, but there's no reason for the film to start constricting its display of scenery so much when it switches countries. But worst of all, the attempt at portraying Liz's supposed connection with a "higher being" is flimsy at best. It doesn't get much better once we finally get to Bali. The "Meet Cute" between Liz and Felipe is ultra-contrived and their relationship is hardly developed. We simply "accept" that they're in love because the film TELLS us that they are, but we don't believe it. When one sees the final kiss between the lovebirds right before credits roll, one usually knows whether it was earned or not. In this case, it definitely isn't. In the grand scheme of the film's approach, it almost would've made more sense for Liz to fly back to New York at the end and jump into David's arms, seeing as her romance with him at the beginning was far more well-developed. Oh, and let's not even talk about the fact that, even though Liz's last location (Bali) is in Indonesia, the guy she meets and falls in love with is actually Brazilian rather than an Indonesian local. The movie chooses to go for the stereotype of the white woman who falls in love with a Latin American, bohemian guy, rather than take risks. If Liz had met and fallen in love with say, a Muslim living in Indonesia, I may have given the film more credit... but this is certainly not the type of movie that'll go out of its way to miff mainstream audiences and surprise those of us who prefer something different.