Like “Playboy” for “Gourmet” and “National Geographic” subscribers, “Eat Pray Love” features some of the most sensuous food-porn money shots this side of “Like Water for Chocolate.” It’s a celebration of guilt-free eating and traveling that somehow manages to wallow in heartbreak while it rejoices in the merits of slurp-worthy pasta, sigh-inducing beaches and sunset vistas. Travelocity and Olive Garden should’ve paid a promotional fee for all the extra business they’ll receive from those enamored with this adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s ubiquitous bestseller.
Julia Roberts is perfectly cast as the author, Liz, because anyone else with a less infectious grin or less sympathetic tears would have alienated the audience quickly. All the goodwill she’s built up with fans of “Pretty Woman,” “Steel Magnolias,” and “Erin Brokovich” will keep the key demographic engaged, even as her Liz courts our distaste.
A New York-based travel writer, Liz finds herself in crisis when she comes to the frightening realization that she’s outgrown her wandering and unfocused husband (a sad, but surprisingly funny Billy Crudup who unfortunately is as shallowly drawn as most one-dimensional female characters). Part of the problem begins here, as she goes from relatively happy to crisis and divorce in what feels like three scenes.
After a post-divorce, tumultuous fling with a young, pseudo-Buddhist actor (James Franco, seemingly playing himself, and doing quite a good job of trying to appear as dour and obnoxious as possible), Liz determines that her salvation can’t simply be found in yet another relationship. Discovering she has an undernourished sense of self, she decides divine liberation will be found in her first love: travel. Against the better judgment of be her best friend (a serviceable Viola Davis who doesn’t have too much to do), she plans a yearlong soul-saving sojourn, divided between three disparate locales. In Italy, she will sop up her sorrows with bread and pasta, while a trip to India will unite her with her ex-boyfriend’s guru. For the last leg of her trip, she will return to Bali, where an aging medicine man first predicted her painful year of divorce and heartache. Along the way, she meets a variety of characters who inspire her, including a fellow traveler in Rome, a catch-phrase-spouting Texan (the always wonderful Richard Jenkins who shines in an emotional, cut-free monologue) seeking enlightenment in India, and a soft-rock-loving Brazilian (Javier Bardem, further erasing nightmares of Anton Chigurh’s unsexiness) in Bali.
Director Ryan Murphy is best known for the stylish TV melodrama of “Nip/Tuck” and “Glee,” and the tone sometimes falters here. It’s tempting to giggle in what are meant to be entirely serious moments. But the dialogue (which often seems pulled directly from the self-help and New Age sections) might be the cause more than Murphy’s efforts behind the camera. However, cinematography from Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino favorite Robert Richardson nicely capture the incredible scenery and equally photogenic food, but many shots of the actors are plagued by odd, ever-present backlighting, which makes the recipients look slightly saintly. It’s a honey-dew look and while pretty at first, it’s overkill use becomes an irritant.
Dario Marianelli’s work as composer alternates ascending strings and piano with ethic-infused tracks that make the score sound like world music à la Barnes & Noble , though the score’s theme is nice and relatively moving. The soundtrack choices from music supervisor P.J. Bloom features plenty of recognizable, if not particularly inspired picks. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” portends a break-up, while tracks from Bebel and Joao Gilberto are the choices for Brazilian music that soundtrack those breezy and dreamy Bali sequences (and they run from tolerable to incredibly cliche).
Edward Said would have volumes to write about the romanticism and exoticism attached to various characters and locales in Liz’s time in India and Bali. The mystics she encounters seem otherworldly, and there’s never too much attention paid to place when she isn’t in Europe. Bali is Bali, and India is apparently one indistinguishable mass, with no mention of the towns where she stays.
Despite the fact that the film very much takes the American tourist’s approach to geography and cultural tourism, it’s a largely inoffensive and harmless movie— if entirely too long at 2 ¼ hours, which is the film’s Achilles’ heel and turns the picture from innocuous to tedious. Regardless, it’s a movie that will certainly appeal to its core audience of “Oprah” viewers, Deepak Chopra devotees, and fans of Gilbert’s memoir. Everyone else will just leave the theater hungry and probably yearning for something with a bit more depth. [C]
