Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert was a sensation, spending a long time atop the New York Times bestsellers list. Lots of individuals have been awaiting the film version starring Julia Roberts. The film was released today, and few critics warmed to it. The previous hotly awaited somewhat-feminist travel movie this year, Sex and the City 2, was also raked over the coals by critics.
The exhilarating self discovery story retold like it’s never been told before
The book, a travelogue, spiritual guide and autobiography by Elizabeth Gilbert, describes her divorce and voyage of spiritual awakening in her travels. She told her publisher about the idea before the film, and financed it with a huge advance she got for it. The film stars Julia Roberts, James Franco, Billy Crudup, and Javier Bardem, and it was directed by Ryan Murphy.
Not a plethora of glowing Eat Pray Love movie review pages
The day of release, Rotten Tomatoes had the film at around 36 percent. A review from PRI’s The World by Beth Accomando said “more like eat, pray for it to be over, gag.” Adam Graham from the Detroit News said the film amounted to “an crazy fantasy for rich people.” The Chicago Sun Times and famed critic Roger Ebert was not amused. He opined that in order to get the film “I guess you have to belong to the narcissistic subculture of Woo-Woo.” Within the Christian Science Monitor, Andy Klein said that the sequence where Roberts learns to meditate, it “involves emptying her mind – which shouldn’t take much heavy lifting.”
You’ve to be critical to critique
The negative reviews all have a comparable theme, so it appears it isn’t just a case of authorities being mean for the joy of doing so. The book did very well, after all, for a reason. It has a positive message, about getting in touch with one’s spiritual side. Not everybody will react well to that. Perhaps the theme simply worked better in the book. Some may discover it inspirational; others are going to discover it trite. A book or film like Eat, Pray, Love can try so hard to uplift that it becomes trite and a self parody.
More data on this topic
Rotten Tomatoes
rottentomatoes.com/m/eat_pray_love/
Roger Bert
rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100811/REVIEWS/100819999
SC Monitor
csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2010/0813/Eat-Pray-Love-movie-review
