Movie Review: Eat Pray Love

First off, I would like to thank the Lakers for not letting me down yesterday.  Good job beating the Houston Rockets (without Yao Ming) in overtime by 8 points.  8 is a good number.  I slept well that night. 

My Rating: 5/10
IMDB Rating: 5.1/10

Where do I start with this movie? Eat Pray Love is based on a book by Elizabeth Gilbert, who was paid by her publisher or whoever to travel the world and find herself.  This is the epitome of "priv-lit" (privileged literature).  Let's list the specs:
- casting of Julia Roberts as the main person
- casting of Javier Bardem as the Brazilian lover
- casting of James Franco as the original boyfriend with whom Gilbert's character gets with soon after divorcing her perfectly adequate husband....
- A section in Italy based entirely around food
So after this reveal ^^^, you'd think that this movie was totally awesome.  Potentially life-changing material, right? I mean, you've got Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, and James Franco to draw in a diverse audience, as well as visual scenery the likes of which doesn't belong in such an awful movie....Italy, India, and Bali.  But my beef isn't with the way the movie looked.  Javier Bardem is surely fun to watch no matter what he's doing, and Julia Roberts doesn't make me want to X-out of the movie either, and presentation of the food (what little food they showed...) was quite tasteful.  Stretched pun intended.  My beef is with the characters.....really all of them.

The risk with this kind of "based on the true life story of" films is that people will go in and utterly judge the main character.  It's a no-win situation.  Julia Roberts plays Elizabeth Gilbert (listed on IMDB as "Liz Gilbert"), the author of the original book on which the filmed is based and the character around which all the movement happens.  Julia Roberts is a phenomenal-if-not-a-little-dry actress.  It's just that the woman she was supposed to portray is so annoying.  The same thing happened with Julie and Julia.  When the movie was made, everyone started to hate the character of Julie Powell because she was just so goddamn whiney.  But these women have real-life counterparts, and as a result, I already dislike Elizabeth Gilbert even though I've never even met her! Here's why: she's in a marriage with a successful lawyer who obviously loves her a lot, but she divorces him because, it seems, her marriage isn't exciting enough.  She gets with her boyfriend (played in the film by James Franco), who is a meditating, guru-worshiping hippie with whom she also fights.  Life unfulfilled.  Drops everything (the film conveniently neglects to mention that the bill was footed by her publisher...), and goes on an around the world trip to Italy, India, and Bali.  PREMISE.  Then she finds the love of her life (supposedly Javier Bardem) in Bali.  True happiness. 

Liz Gilbert...in my humble opinion....really needs to get off her little soap box pedestal which is balancing on a high horse.  While in Italy she chides her new found American friend (in Italy) about not worrying about her waistline.  Then there's a whole montage where she can't fit into jeans and skinny Julia Roberts comments on how she can't get sexy lingerie because she's "fine with her big-girl pants." Yeah.  That's believable, she says sarcastically.  Then she goes to India, which she only does because apparently she, like, actually got something from her free-drifting boyfriend, but it seems like the only reason she even goes to India is because of him.  That is not a good reason.  Then she goes and she meets a dry-humored old guy with a past.  *Life-change*. Then she goes to Bali, where she then meet the love of her life, played by Javier Bardem, and we're supposed to be happy for her.  Come on, who wouldn't be happy with Javier Bardem, right? Except that in real life he actually looks like this:

"Hey sweetie, when I was your age, there was no such thing as a car."

HE LOOKS TO BE ABOUT 30 YEARS OLD THAN HER??? HE COULD BE HER DAD....Ok, so couples with large age differences are not that uncommon, but when your life is being made into a high budget movie with an actress who is known for demanding a high salary...you're okay with them taking your current husband who looks like that and making him into Javier Bardem? Now I don't feel so bitter towards your Privileged Life!! Not only is Liz Gilbert's life so unlikeable, but it sucks that she's capitalizing off what basically was her thousands upon thousands of dollars trip around the world to basically find another husband.  It's a little sickening. 

In the Italy section of the story, there was actually hardly any food scenes.  There was maybe 3.  It's like this director forgot Audience Attracting 101.  PRETTY FOOD SELLS.  And while the presence of the artichokes, and the marguerita pizza, and whatever else probably drew some people, I know a lot of people were disappointed that there wasn't more food. 

In order to watch this movie, the viewer should have an extremely high tolerance for whiney and irritating and a lot of "Caucasians gracing the minorities with their humbled presence." The only redeeming quality of the film seems to be Javier Bardem who just can't seem to do anything wrong (<3), but he may as well be a whole new character.  It's like putting in a newly invented villain into a Batman movie.  The fans will be like "WTF?" And Bardem does get with annoying, whiney Liz Gilbert/Julia Roberts, so his persona is kind of ruined near the end.