Cranky At the Movies

When you fall asleep at a movie and begin to snore, that constitutes a review. When no one around you goes "shhhh," that constitutes another.

But in case my snoring at the Majestic Bay Theater is not sufficient, let me say why I hated EAT PRAY LOVE. I hadn't expected to hate it, because I found Elizabeth Gilbert's book (with commas, which somehow disappeared on the way to Hollywood) highly interesting. It's an inner journey, from an exclusively secular romantic despair to a state in which the equally secular author is finally able to accept and blend physical pleasure, a spiritual practice, and a realistic love affair. The journey starts in New York and ends in Bali, with Italy and India in between.

Gilbert is a nuanced writer with high awareness of her own motives and reactions, both of which are usually a complicated mess. In the book we are privy to all this complexity. The movie, however, downplays the spiritual journey and instead concentrates on Elizabeth and men. Either God is simply not as interesting as sex, or else He is too explosive and unsettling a topic for any movie that doesn't just take pot shots at Christian fundamentalists. Granted, watching people meditate for hours in an ashram does not make for much dramatic action, but the movie could have tried a little harder to show why Elizabeth bothers, what she gets from it, and why it matters to her. Instead, we get bantering with a male ashram-ite from Texas.

Julia Roberts does the best she can with this shallow stuff, and she is lovely to look at. The food in Italy is lovely, the saris in India are lovely, the scenery in Bali is lovely. Even the men (Stephen, David, Richard, Ian, Felipe) are lovely. But neither scenery nor loveliness a movie maketh. Skip this one and read the book instead.