DVD review: Eat Pray Love

A woman quest of self discovery across three different countries.

From the beginning this wasn’t an easy proposition. Adapted from the incredibly successful travel memories of Elizabeth Gilbert it combines two very easy to botch genre.

The title refers to the three different legs in Elizabeth travel. Eat is for Italy where she pursues all the carnal pleasures, Pray is for India where she pursue spirituality and Love is for Bali where all the romantic stuff happens.

I did never read the book, and I have no intention to do it either, not my genre, but in the movie Elizabeth doesn’t come off as very sympathetic. She abandons an extremely successful life for reasons that she can explains. I understand that the point of a journey of self discovery is that you don’t know and that life should be more than the purely material stuff but honestly speaking our protagonist comes out as a bit of a spoiled brat. This is noteworthy considering that she is played by none other than Julia Roberts, one of the most relatable actresses on the planet.

I won’t point the finger at Julia Roberts work; I think she did a fair job with the material. The director, Ryan Murphy of “Glee” fame, was also competent but, as I noted at the beginning, this is the type of material that is very easy to botch. For every “Forrest Gump” there are dozens of “Eat, Pray, Love”.

All the various stages of Elizabeth travels are really just a collection of clichés. What she meets is just a bunch of walking stereotypes expressing an endless array of vague phrases that should hide very wise “truths”. In the end the overall impression is that happiness means simply living in a never-ending holiday.

Maybe I’m not the target audience but for me this movie should be avoided at all costs, even by die hard Julia Roberts fans.