Eat Pray Love Review

Eat Pray Love, starring Julia Roberts, is the movie adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir of the same title. I read the book a few years ago and enjoyed Gilbert’s funny, self-deprecating writing style as she describes her breakdown, brought on by her realization that she does not want the conventional life-path she has started down, and subsequent recovery, brought on by a year of travel to Italy (where she eats. A lot.), India (where she prays, in the form of a meditation retreat) and Bali, Indonesia (where she learns to love again).

I’ve read a lot of reviews of the movie that seem to come to the conclusion that the movie is bad, therefore the book must bad, therefore Liz Gilbert must be bad, and how dare she finance her year-long quest with the advance on the book she planned to write about it. Then there are those who think the book was good and therefore the movie should have been good and they are disappointed that it’s not. I’ve long since given up on the idea that beloved books will make beloved movies. If it does happen that way, it’s pure coincidence. I also think Gilbert was very savvy to manage to pay for her trip with her book advance. She was also smart enough to sell the movie rights and then walk away. Her one mistake may have been allowing the character to retain her name, which has resulted in the confluence of Julia Roberts’ portrayal with Liz Gilbert, the writer.

The movie itself is your typical Hollywood schmaltzy chick-flick affair. I had hoped to be seduced by the scenery enough to at least get some pleasure from the film, but instead I found that I really did not engage with the story at all. Most of the humor of the book seems to have been left out the script. I did get a laugh out of super-skinny Julia pretending to try on "big girl pants" during the Italy sequence. Those were the skinniest fat pants I've ever seen. And was there really a friendly rogue elephant in the book? Cause I don't remember that part at all.

In the book, Liz Gilbert is a long-time yoga practitioner. She is introduced to her guru (who is not named in the book or movie, but is believed to be Gurumayi Chidvilasananda) by her boyfriend David, but it's not her first time around a yoga mat, as the movie implies. Eat Pray Love is much admired by many in the yoga community, but those hoping to see a lot of yoga (as in asana) in the moive will be disappointed. Julia once rolls out her mat and looks at it as if she's thinking about practicing. She exhibits some pretty open hips in the meditation scenes and pulls out a nice lotus at the end, but that's about it.