There's something about Julia Roberts' new movie "Eat Pray Love" that just isn't right, and that something is her.
Roberts was miscast as the talkative journalist who divorced her husband and traveled to three countries to find inner peace. "Eat Pray Love" is based on Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of the same name. I've seen the real Gilbert in a "Good Morning America" interview, and while she has a timid, but kind face, Roberts is too confident and just too damn happy to play Gilbert. Amy Adams would have made a better Elizabeth Gilbert because she inspires genuine sympathy. In the book, Gilbert's spiritual journey takes place when she is 34-years-old, and at 42, Roberts looks a bit rundown. Yes, she's a woman and a man could get away with it, but still Roberts doesn't look like the thirty-something in the book. Roberts age also causes character changes.
Like the book, the film "Eat Pray Love" follows Elizabeth Gilbert from the pleasure zone of Italy (namely Rome and Naples), the graceful India (where she spends all her time in an ashram praying to her guru), and in Indonesia (where she gets tropical in Bali). Gilbert also finds love and God, and it's happily ever after. The book is less a memoir, and reads more like a spiritual guide. 'Eat Pray Love's director and screenwriter Ryan Murphy (of "Glee" fame) cuts some things out of the book (thankfully), but some other things cut leave the film feeling incomplete. With a book, you can read it gradually, during different sittings with breaks, but a movie can only be so long, especially when sitting in an uncomfortable seat in the movie theater. Surprisingly, Murphy's film goes at a quick pace, similar to his hit television show, "Glee." It's only at the film's later part in Bali that the film starts to drag.
"Eat Pray Love" has the same biting humor that's displayed on "Glee," and the constant laughter from the audience I was with is a clear indicator, but despite good jokes and dialogue, "Eat Pray Love" suffers from lack of character development. Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert inspires zero sympathy. In the film, she leaves her husband (Billy Crudup) and divorces him, and then takes up with a younger man David (James Franco). Note, in the book, from what I remember, David is not a younger man. I could be wrong, but whatever it was, the age difference would not look as striking as it is in the film. Roberts is 42, and Franco is 32. He's the age that the real Gilbert was in the book. See?
So, with no sympathy for Roberts as Gilbert, it just feels like another Julia Roberts movie, except with fantastic editing. It's the film editing that saves "Eat Pray Love." The colorful Italian dishes intercut quickly as Roberts orders off from a menu at an Italian restaurant, and the sweeping shots of Bali are breathtaking.
Viola Davis is wasted as Gilbert's best friend, as is Mike O'Malley (who also stars on Ryan Murphy's "Glee") as Davis' husband. Recent Tony Award-winner Davis can act her butt off, but she relegated to the sidekick role that's become requisite for a romantic comedy. That's essentially what Murphy's "Eat Pray Love" is, a beautifully photographed rom-com. Academy Award-winner Javier Bardem is hilarious as the Brazilian hunk Felipe (closer to Roberts' age, although he's much older in the book, hmmm...), but still there's no chemistry between Bardem and Roberts. I would have liked to see Felipe as an older man, just as he is in the book, and Amy Adams as the younger woman. It would be, in a word sexy. Richard Jenkins is good as Gilbert's Texas friend she meets at the ashram in India, but many of his scenes seem too weepy, and sort of corny. Jenkins' character feels immense sympathy for Roberts' Gilbert that the audience doesn't. It's unearned sympathy.
Interestingly, the people at Columbia Pictures were so impressed with "Eat Pray Love" film that they put Ryan Murphy and Julia Roberts together again for another movie. "Eat Pray Love" is the first feature-film Murphy has directed and it's not a winner, but not a bomb. It's simply decent. To end this, the film leaves a lot to be desired.
