Eat Pray Love

The Movie Brothers are proud to have Lauren Romano as a new contributor to The Movie Brothers. Lauren is a former journalist of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a copywriter, and movie blogger. You should check out her site, mylifeatthemovies.com, in which she plans to see every movie released this year. Here’s her first review for us.

Julia Roberts stars in this adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir about coping with a depressing divorce. After deciding to reshape her life, Liz (Roberts) travels the world in search of direction. She heads to Italy, India and Bali, indulging in delicious cuisine while seeking the true meaning of self-love, family, friendship and forgiveness. Along the way, she meets a bevy of characters and, possibly, her true love.

Lauren
Rating: 3 out of 10

I tried to read “Eat Pray Love: The Book” twice and couldn’t even get through Italy, the author’s first stop on her spiritual journey. Looking into the depressed mind of a woman who, to me, has the most glamorous job ever – a travel writer – is hard to swallow. It’s full of self-indulgent, self-pity bullshit, and has a sweeping phoniness about it. 

But, for some reason, I still wanted to see the movie. I couldn’t resist Julia Roberts eating her way through Italy and falling in love with Javier Bardem. I thought the Hollywood treatment, which has ruined so many books, could make this one enjoyable.

I was wrong. It was more than 2 hours of whiny self-indulgent, self-pity bullshit.

The story is split into three countries, but really it’s four because the first quarter takes place in New York, where this glamorous travel writer lives. And, that first quarter drags on and on and on. I think Elizabeth Gilbert went into so much detail about how sad and pathetic (ha) her life was as a way of justifying her journey. But who needs justification for wanting to travel the world? Not me. 

Too long. Too much introspective. Too much thought. I really believe no one actually cares what’s in someone else’s journal. We all feel alone. We’re all afraid. We’re all disappointed. We’ve all been hurt. So why is Liz’s story so interesting? It’s not. She just got a book deal and was able to take a year off and travel the world in search of her balance. Most of us have to settle, finding our balance between our 7 a.m. Starbucks and our 11 p.m. sleeping pill.

Do I sound bitter? I am.