Eat Pray Love in Ubud

EAT, PRAY, LOVE
SIT, WATCH, YAWN.


The film is a chick flick on hormones.

Regarded by its fans as a Bible for the modern woman, Eat Pray Love is beloved by many. This means the usual built-in audience theory applies (ala Harry Potter and LOTR), with the enormous box office appeal of Hollywood darling Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman/Closer) thrown in to up the ante.

All chick-flicks need some decent eye candy to please the masses and the box office, and Spanish hottie and Oscar-winner Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men/Before Night Falls) leads that charge, with some much welcomed back-up from James Franco (Pineapple Express/Milk) and Billy Crudup (Almost Famous/Watchmen).

So the story for the uninitiated few, and a true one no less, sees journalist Elizabeth Gilbert (Julia Roberts) chucking in her New York marriage and life for a year in Rome, India and Bali, in order to "find herself". Enough said. Nothing else actually happens, which is infuriating for the rest of us hoping for some kind of plot.



From a cinematic perspective, the one clever move these filmmakers made was getting the budget to shoot on location. We start off in New York City before an emotional epiphany or two leads us on to a trip to Italy to eat, India to pray, and finally Bali, for some love. The highlight of the movie are the gorgeous locations. Photography is superb and the Indonesian tourism authorities should take a leaf or two on how to promote Indonesia.

Gilbert encounters all sorts of characters on her journeys, the most resonant of which is Richard from Texas, who she befriends in an Indian ashram. The main reason Richard becomes the most memorable is because of the class actor who plays him – Oscar-nominee Richard Jenkins (North Country/The Visitor). He becomes the dramatic centre-piece for this somewhat lacklustre movie, and a definite highlight.

Gilbert finally arrives in Bali, and its here she meets Felipe, and where the “love” chapter of this story unfolds. Bardem has an air of gentle resignation about him in the role. It's one he could play in his sleep and you sense he might be doing exactly that. The Indonesian actors were marvelous with charm and impeccable comic timing.

While Eat Pray Love was a little too indulgent and bland for me, it's far from offensive and certainly pretty. For those who loved the book (I did not), I suspect this lengthy adaptation may mostly deliver. It will also work on some level as a postcard travelogue, with some gorgeous destinations captured in their big screen glory.

Biography of Elizabeth Gilbert.



Elizabeth attended New York University, where she studied political science by day and worked on her short stories by night. After college, she spent several years traveling around the country, working in bars, diners and ranches, collecting experiences to transform into fiction. She also worked as a journalist for such publications as Spin, GQ and The New York Times Magazine. She was a three-time finalist for The National Magazine work, and an article she wrote in GQ about her experiences bartending on the Lower East Side eventually became the basis for the movie COYOTE UGLY.

In 2000, Elizabeth published her first novel, STERN MEN (a story of brutal territory wars between two remote fishing islands off the coast of Maine) which was a New York Times Notable Book. In 2002, Elizabeth published THE LAST AMERICAN MAN - the true story of the modern day woodsman Eustace Conway. This book, her first work of non-fiction, was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Elizabeth is best known, however for her 2006 memoir EAT PRAY LOVE, which chronicled her journey alone around the world, looking for solace after a difficult divorce. The book was an international bestseller, translated into over thirty languages, with over 7 million copies sold worldwide. The book became so popular that, in 2008, Time Magazine named Elizabeth as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.