eat pray love movie review

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Elizabeth Gilbert's book "Eat, Pray, Love," unread by me, spent 150 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and is by some accounts a good one. It is also movie material, concerning as it does a tall blond (Gilbert) who ditches a failing marriage and a disastrous love affair to spend a year living in Italy, India and Bali seeking to find the balance of body, mind and spirit.

During this journey, great-looking men are platooned at her, and a wise man, who has to be reminded who she is, remembers instantly, although what he remembers is only what she's just told him.

I gather Gilbert's "prose is fueled by a mix of intelligence, wit and colloquial exuberance that is close to irresistible" (New York Times Book Review), and if intelligence, wit and exuberance are what you're looking for, Julia Roberts is an excellent choice as the movie's star. You can see how it would be fun to spend a year traveling with Gilbert. A lot more fun than spending nearly two hours watching a movie about it. I guess you have to belong to the narcissistic subculture of Woo-Woo.

Here is a movie about Liz Gilbert. About her quest, her ambition, her good luck in finding only nice men, including the ones she dumps. She funds her entire trip, including scenic accommodations, ashram, medicine man, guru, spa fees and wardrobe, on her advance to write this book. Well, the publisher obviously made a wise investment. It's all about her, and a lot of readers can really identify with that. Her first marriage apparently broke down primarily because she tired of it, although Roberts at (a sexy and attractive) 43 makes an actor's brave stab at explaining they were "young and immature." She walks out on the guy ( Billy Crudup ) and he still likes her and reads her on the Web.

In Italy, she eats such Pavarottian plates of pasta that I hope one of the things she prayed for in India was deliverance from the sin of gluttony. At one trattoria she apparently orders the entire menu, and I am not making this up. She meets a man played by James Franco , about whom, enough said. She shows moral fibre by leaving such a dreamboat for India, where her quest involves discipline in meditation, for which she allots three months rather than the recommended lifetime. There she meets a tall, bearded, bespectacled older Texan ( Richard Jenkins ) who is without question the most interesting and attractive man in the movie, and like all of the others seems innocent of lust.

In Bali she revisits her beloved adviser Ketut Liyer ( Hadi Subiyanto ), who is a master of truisms known to us all. Although he connects her with a healer who can mend a nasty cut with a leaf applied for a few hours, his own skills seem limited to the divinations anyone could make after looking at her, and telling her things about herself after she has already revealed them.

Now she has found Balance, begins to dance on the high wire of her life. She meets Felipe ( Javier Bardem ), another divorced exile, who is handsome, charming, tactful, forgiving and a good kisser. He explains that he lives in Bali because his business is import-export, "which you can do anywhere" — although later, he explains she must move to Bali because "I live in Bali because my business is here." They've both forgotten what he said earlier. Unless perhaps you can do import-export anywhere, but you can only import and export from Bali when you live there. That would certainly be my alibi.

The audience I joined was perhaps 80 percent female. I heard some sniffles and glimpsed some tears, and no wonder. "Eat Pray Love" is shameless wish-fulfillment, a Harlequin novel crossed with a mystic travelogue, and it mercifully reverses the life chronology of many people, which is Love Pray Eat.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Eat Pray Love (2010)

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some sexual references and male rear nudity

133 minutes

James Franco as David

Richard Jenkins as Richard

Viola Davis as Delia Shiraz

Javier Bardem as Felipe

Billy Crudup as Stephen

Hadi Subiyanto as Ketut Liyer

Julia Roberts as Liz Gilbert

Directed by

Ryan Murphy

Screenplay by

Jennifer Salt

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Eat Pray Love Reviews

There’s some love along the way, and a little bit of praying, but it’s the “Eat” in the title that gets the most attention, like a neon sign in the window of an all-night diner.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 16, 2023

Unlike the original source, Eat Pray Love presents a flawless caricature that's on an idyllic, hiccup-free trip in a world full of kind people who are happy to be at the mercy of this lost American tourist. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 21, 2022

A never ending yawn. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 19, 2022

Not a good film by any means, but sometimes you need a bad film of exactly this ilk: frothy, silly and as pleasurable as wrapping yourself in a warm blanket.

Full Review | Nov 5, 2021

Without discounting the importance of Gilbert's decision... it can't be removed from its context: it's a story about choosing self over prescribed generic femininity, a world of your own making over the deeply patriarchal American upper-middle class.

Full Review | Jun 9, 2021

Eat Pray Love is more of a romanticized travelogue, rather than a truly transformative one.

Full Review | May 23, 2021

In many ways I don't even consider Eat Pray Love a film. I see it as more akin to a very well made travel brochure.

Full Review | May 19, 2021

This translation to the big screen is dull, boring, and largely unaffecting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Nov 29, 2020

Wraps it all up infinitely tighter and neater than does Gilbert's book.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 7, 2020

Full Review | Mar 2, 2019

... almost two and a half hours in which [Julia Roberts] displays her charisma... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 19, 2018

With 6 million readers of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir, clearly, the movie has big shoes to fill. It may not succeed, but Julia Roberts and the film's designers give us a lot to enjoy.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Dec 3, 2017

An engaging but deliberate chick flick at times, Eat, Pray, Love has the quintessential chick flick star at the helm with Roberts, who played the role beautifully...

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Sep 9, 2017

The unexamined privilege, the idealization/exotification of all places east, the canned spirituality, the sensual goddamn spaghetti-it's all so focus-group-tested and Oprah approved and self-perpetuating and embarrassing.

Full Review | Aug 30, 2017

Let's face it. There are some books that should never be made into movies.

Full Review | Aug 11, 2017

This gentle, meditative, well-told tale has a lot to offer.

Full Review | Mar 7, 2017

Eat Pray Love is overlong and quickly becomes tedious. It features narcissistic, inward looking characters of no interest at all and amounts to a very poorly made film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Nov 9, 2013

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Feb 18, 2012

Liz maybe the most unlikeable character Julia Roberts has ever had to play, not because co-writer/director Ryan Murphy is trying to make her so but because everything the film does pushes her in that direction.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Mar 21, 2011

A seemingly interminable romantic travelogue that feels as though it takes as long to watch as the year-long spiritual quest it depicts.

Full Review | Mar 14, 2011

International edition
Australia edition
Europe edition

Eat Pray Love

S it, watch, groan. Yawn, fidget, stretch. Eat Snickers, pray for end of dire film about Julia Roberts's emotional growth, love the fact it can't last for ever. Wince, daydream, frown. Resent script, resent acting, resent dinky tripartite structure. Grit teeth, clench fists, focus on plot. Troubled traveller Julia finds fulfilment through exotic foreign cuisine, exotic foreign religion, sex with exotic foreign Javier Bardem . Film patronises Italians, Indians, Indonesians. Julia finds spirituality, rejects rat race, gives Balinese therapist 16 grand to buy house. Balinese therapist is grateful, thankful, humble. Sigh, blink, sniff. Check watch, groan, slump.

Film continues, persists, drags on. Wonder about Julia Roberts's hair, wonder about Julia Roberts's teeth, wonder about permanence of Julia Roberts's reported conversion to Hinduism. Click light-pen on, click light-pen off, click light-pen on. Eat crisps noisily, pray for more crisps, love crisps. Munch, munch, munch. Munch, munch, suddenly stop munching when fellow critic hisses "Sshhh!" Eat crisps by sucking them, pray that this will be quiet, love the salty tang. This, incidentally, makes me plump, heavy, fat. Yet Julia's life-affirming pasta somehow makes her slim, slender, svelte. She is emoting, sobbing, empathising. She has encounters, meetings, learning-experiences. Meets wise old Texan, sweet Indian girl, dynamic Italian-speaking Swede who thinks "Vaffanculo" means "screw you".

Roberts eats up the oxygen, preys on credulous cinemagoers, loves what she sees in the mirror. Julia shags Billy Crudup, James Franco, Javier Bardem. Ex-husband, rebound lover, true romance. Crudup is shallow'n'callow, Franco is goofy'n'flaky, Bardem is hunky'n'saintly. We hate Crudup, like Franco, love Bardem. Divorced Javier is gorgeous, sexy, emotionally giving. About his ex-wife we are indifferent, incurious, uninterested. She is absent, off the scene, unnamed. That's how Julia likes it, needs it, prefers it.

Movie passes two-hour mark, unfinished, not over yet. Whimper, moan, grimace. Wriggle, writhe, squirm. Seethe, growl, rage. Eat own fist, pray for death, love the rushing sense of imminent darkness. Scream, topple forward, have to be carried out of cinema. Reach life crisis, form resolution, ask editor for paid year's leave to go travelling. Editor stands up, shakes head, silently mouths the word: "No". Nod, turn, return to work. Personal growth, spiritual journeys, emotional enrichment? Not as easy as 1-2-3.

Julia Roberts
Javier Bardem
Comedy films
Drama films
Romance films

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Eat pray love — film review.

The film never ventures, even once, into a situation that does not reek of the familiar.

By Kirk Honeycutt

Kirk Honeycutt

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In “ Eat Pray Love ,” Julia Robert’s character, Liz Gilbert, takes a holiday from her miserable life as a well-respected, financially secure New York writer, loved by men she cannot love back and despairing of her own inner emptiness. She travels the world to seek enlightenment, a journey — she never hesitates to tell anyone she meets — outside her own comfort zone. For the viewer though, it’s anything but. The film never ventures, even once, into a situation that does not reek of comfy familiarity.

Of course, the Elizabeth Gilbert memoir on which the movie is based also got criticized for its Western fetishization of Eastern thought and the overly self-conscious nature of this journey — reportedly paid for with a publisher’s advance for the book itself. None of that stopped her memoir from becoming a bestseller translated into 40 languages. So with Julia Roberts making one of her increasingly rare starring appearances and the sensual beauty of Italy, India and Indonesia as backdrop for the romanticized navel-gazing, “Eat Pray Love” should attract a substantial female audience, a demographic ill-served by the summer’s mostly testosterone-fueled movies.

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'Eat Pray Love': Have Bucks, Will Travel (To Find Self)

Scott Tobias

The Elephant Brief: Julia Roberts stars as Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love , the story of one woman's unexamined first-world privilege -- er, that is, her soul-searching trip to India, Indonesia and other points around the globe. Francois Duhamel/Sony Pictures hide caption

Eat Pray Love

Director: Ryan Murphy
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 133 minutes

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"I wanted to explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country, in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well," writes Elizabeth Gilbert in her popular memoir Eat, Pray, Love . "I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India, and in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two."

Therein lies the premise and the problem with Eat, Pray, Love , at least in its frustrating (and comma-free) screen incarnation: The world exists as a kind of sprawling, full-service spa treatment for the soul, neatly compartmentalized to nourish the senses, the spirit and the heart. Nice therapy if you can swing it.

Though Eat Pray Love never loses the sour whiff of unexamined first-world privilege, its heroine does at least immerse herself in different cultures rather than expecting them to adapt to her. As played by a sun-kissed Julia Roberts, Liz has undertaken this adventure partly to open up to new experiences and loosen the vise-grip she's previously maintained over every aspect of her life, and the little tension that surfaces in her journey is owed to the push and pull between her itinerary -- as defined by the book pitch (and advance money) that made it all possible -- and her desire to feel truly unmoored and liberated. That's the essence of a true vacation, and she has to work hard for it.

Before Liz ever steps on a plane, events in her life conspire to do all the packing for her. Feeling shackled by a domestic situation she never wanted, Liz enters into a contentious divorce with her flaky husband (Billy Crudup), then immediately throws herself into a go-nowhere rebound fling with a young and none-too-talented actor (a charming James Franco). The book deal affords her an opportunity to flee Manhattan for a year and define herself apart from a relationship for once. Which raises an obvious rhetorical question: Is there any reason for us to tag along on her personal journey?

Love, Indonesian Style: While trying to recover after a messy divorce, Liz (Julia Roberts) meets Felipe (Javier Bardem), a Brazilian architect, in Bali. Francois Duhamel/Sony Pictures hide caption

Love, Indonesian Style: While trying to recover after a messy divorce, Liz (Julia Roberts) meets Felipe (Javier Bardem), a Brazilian architect, in Bali.

Well, as a sensual experience, Eat Pray Love falls squarely in the tradition of other femme-centered cinematic staycations, like Enchanted April or Under the Tuscan Sun, and certainly it's transporting to watch Roberts consume pizza in Naples or drift along crystalline currents off the coast of Bali.

She also encounters a few fascinating seekers in her travels, including a prickly old Texan (Richard Jenkins), whom she befriends at an Indian ashram and a Brazilian businessman in Indonesia, played by Javier Bardem at his most devastatingly suave . In the film's travel-brochure paradise, they make for agreeable companions.

Trouble is, we're still stuck with Liz, who never passes up the chance to process her encounters into Oprah-fied nuggets of wisdom. At her worst, she's like a narcissistic tour guide who invites sightseers to marvel at the spectacular vistas and cascading waters inside her own head. Much as Eat Pray Love is about letting go, Liz's habit of imposing pop-psychological significance on every encounter suggests she's still her controlling self. She -- and the movie -- would have been better off letting the world speak for itself.

Movie review: ‘Eat Pray Love’

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If there is one constant in “Eat Pray Love,” the imperfect yet beautifully rendered adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir on a year of heartbreak and healing starring Julia Roberts — it is this: There will be tears.

Happy tears, sad tears, tears of relief, tears of regret, gut-wrenching sobs, really almost any variation imaginable — and that’s just the guy in the next row who didn’t think he’d need Kleenex in a movie, ever. So no need to blush if you find yourself getting teary, nearly everyone in the movie — Roberts, Javier Bardem, Billy Crudup, Viola Davis, Richard Jenkins — cries before it’s over too.

If anything, it was the crying – and the catharsis that comes with it — that made such passionate fans of the book in the first place, myself included. Despite (or because of…) all the education, the career success, the years of therapy, the rich circle of friends and family, Gilbert found herself still getting it completely wrong when it came to relationships with the men in her life. A thoroughly modern, high-class problem that turned out to resonate deeply and widely. The movie hews so closely to all those emotional colors, with Roberts breaking apart so completely and luminously as Liz, that it is likely to touch that same chord.

Just as the book turned out to be a perfect vehicle for Gilbert to work through all manner of emotional highs and lows, the movie creates space and a place for Roberts to give into wave after wave of feelings as she moves through resentment, guilt, regret, forgiveness, joy and hope to change her life.

In Ryan Murphy she seems to have the perfect director. He’s made a career of broken people, bad relationships and fractured self-esteem quite brilliantly, most notably on TV with “Nip/Tuck” and “Glee.” And yes, I know film and TV are very different mediums, but that’s not the problem here. Murphy wrings all of his actors emotionally dry, scraping to the bone to expose vulnerability, but he hasn’t quite figured out how to control that power. So this gorgeous but messy affair isn’t always as satisfying as it should be.

The film basically begins where the book does with Liz Gilbert at 30, a successful writer with a handsome underachieving husband in Stephen (Crudup), a house in a posh New York suburb, on her knees in the middle of the night sobbing a prayer to God to fix what is broken.

The answer is a divorce, which quickly turns catastrophic. Even a dreamy rebound lover named David played by James Franco can’t break her depression. So Liz sets out on a yearlong search for balance and New Age-y enlightenment: the sumptuous feast of Italy where food is the cure, the meditative Indian ashram with Richard from Texas (Jenkins) as her spiritual advisor, and the final months in Bali with the ministrations of local medicine man Ketut (Hadi Subiyanto) and a new romance with Felipe (Bardem).

Meanwhile, the canvas for all these mood swings has such a saturated beauty that it can bring you to tears too. Cinematographer Robert Richardson’s (Oscar winner for “The Aviator” and “JFK”) shots of pasta and pizza, and the Italian cafes and countryside kitchens where Liz partakes, will leave you desperate for a taste; the light filtering through the ashram bathes those scenes with an ethereal glow; the lush tropics of Bali through his lens turns up the heat, though honestly with Bardem around, you don’t need it.

But it’s not all perfection. “Eat Pray Love” was never going to be an easy adaptation given how interior a story Gilbert crafted. The book’s self-help, self-absorbed qualities, which made a publishing hit, threaten sentimental mush on the big screen, and there are times when the film comes close. A few characters have been streamlined, others have been dropped, but Murphy and screenwriting partner Jennifer Salt, stay true to the spirit and construction of the source, and that is part of what takes the film off track.

Liz’s inner voice, which drives the book, turns into extensive voice-over, which Roberts handles well enough. But the conceit of narration cheats the character development time, which would have made for a richer film. You feel this most acutely in Italy, the first leg of the journey. The film never finds its footing there — there’s virtually no connection between Liz and the cast of characters that flow into her life, and almost no story. India, however, is made worthwhile by Jenkins, an actor of extraordinary range who makes the folksy recovering Richard someone you’d want to spend time reflecting with. Bali is saved by Subiyanto, who is delightful as the smiling and nearly toothless ancient healer, and Bardem, whose potent screen presence makes anything look absolutely right for the moment.

Any time Murphy pulls away from the book, the film gets better. The scenes between Liz and her ex, Crudup’s Stephen, are intriguing and always welcome. In their flirts and their fights there is some of the crackling bite that Murphy can give dialogue when he’s at his best, and it hints at what might have been.

It helps that Roberts rides all the turbulent waves with such ease and such grace, that Jenkins knows exactly what to do with his internal churn, and that Bardem can do no wrong. It makes the many tears worth it — or at least it will for those in the mood for a good cry, and all those fans of the book who already knew to bring tissues.

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Eat Pray Love: movie review

In 'Eat Pray Love,' Julia Roberts plays a newly divorced 30-something in search of herself, based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir.

By Andy Klein Film critic

August 13, 2010

Somewhere on its journey to the big screen, “ Eat Pray Love ” – the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert ’s bestselling memoir “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy , India and Indonesia ” – lost not only its marquee-unfriendly subtitle, but even its two commas. It will compensate by inducing a much larger number of comas among its viewers.

For those who missed the book, Gilbert – a successful author increasingly dissatisfied with her life – got a divorce and embarked on a yearlong trip to Italy, India, and Bali in search of enlightenment or balance or some other balm to soothe her unease. She reportedly funded the trip with a hefty advance for the book, thus guaranteeing that she had better learn something knowing and wise, since “Writer scours world for meaning of life... Comes up empty-handed” is not a publisher’s dream pitch for display space at Barnes & Noble .

Julia Roberts stands in for Gilbert here, and her movie star persona overwhelms the character. We never for a minute forget who she is. Liz’s big lesson in the “Eat” segment – Liz must have trouble multitasking because there’s one titular activity per country – is to relax and experience pleasure, mainly in the form of Italian food. She encourages her friend Sofi ( Tuva Novotny ) to stop worrying about maintaining a rigidly low weight and join her in indulgence.

We are treated to a montage – filled with forced jauntiness – of the two women trying to squeeze into a succession of growing pants sizes. Except it’s still Roberts: Even if she did (as reported) gain a whole 10 pounds for the film, her cheekbones could still slice ripe tomatoes. “Letting go” means sliding from the top 1 percent of the population on the slenderness scale to the top 2 percent. (By the way, cinematographer Bob Richardson makes the pasta look so luscious that low-carbers will have to cover their eyes more than the most squeamish viewer at a Saw film.)

Even after the scene switches to India, we’re not allowed to forget Liz’s newfound appetite: A running gag has fellow ashrammer “Richard from Texas ” (the always excellent Richard Jenkins ) always calling her “Groceries” because of the way she can wolf it down.

But, in the Gilbert blueprint, India is supposed to be prayerful, not prandial. So Liz learns to meditate. This involves emptying her mind, which – judging from the banalities in the voice-over – shouldn’t require much heavy lifting, if you catch my drift. (She also takes what must be the shortest vow of silence ever.) It is hard to imagine anything less cinematic than trancing out; to portray it accurately would provide too tempting an invitation to the audience. While I can imagine taking pleasure in gazing at Roberts’s navel, there are few things less rewarding than gazing at Roberts gazing at Roberts’s navel.

Moving from bellybutton to Bali, the film finally allows Liz a carnal/romantic consummation, in the form of Felipe ( Javier Bardem ), a soulful Brazilian expat. They have their ups and downs, but end up literally sailing off into the sunset. No, that’s unfair: The boat has a motor.

What with the title and pedigree, no one would expect “Eat Pray Love” to be filled with thrilling action. But the word “movie” does imply movement, and almost nothing ever happens throughout the protracted two hours and 20 minutes that director/co-writer Ryan Murphy takes to chronicle Liz’s travels. Nor are the “meaningful lessons” worth the wait. During the India scenes, Liz accuses Richard from Texas of spouting a bunch of bumper-sticker slogans ... as though her revelations are any better. Grade: C (Rated PG-13 on appeal for brief strong language, some sexual references, and male rear nudity.)

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Eat Pray Love

Eat Pray Love was more than just one woman's story from the very beginning-- writer Elizabeth Gilbert funded her year-long trip around the world with a publisher's advance, and experienced her stays in Italy, India and Indonesia with the knowledge that they would go into a book, and hopefully a successful one. The resulting bestseller phenomenon is something no one could have anticipated, but now that we have Eat Pray Love the movie, it's clearer than ever that Liz Gilbert, as played by Julia Roberts , is more avatar for all women than an actual human being. We watch her and her blond highlights and her tasteful clothes travel the globe because we cannot do the same, and whatever story might come along with it needs only to not get in the way of all the wish-fulfillment going on in the theater.

Ryan Murphy might seem like an odd choice to handle all of this, given that his current hit show Glee gets in its own way constantly, subbing cute lines and manic plot twists for actual character and story. But Eat Pray Love swings the opposite direction, taking itself and its star way too seriously to carry the same thrill as Gilbert's book. Roberts positively sparkles in the lead role-- and she's in nearly every frame, so that helps a lot-- but the loose structure and deliberately uncertain resolution of the book translate oddly to the screen, a woman struggling to find her purpose in a movie that doesn't understand itself, much less her.

For all the things Eat Pray Love does right, it must constantly overcome its cardinal sin of turning a quick little book into a bloated monster of a movie. Eat Pray Love is nearly two and a half hours long, to the point that 45 minutes go by before Gilbert does any of the three things promised in the title; the story lingers on her divorce (from an affable and slightly pathetic Billy Crudup ) longer than the book did, creates a romantic god out of a minor fling (played by a disheveled and sexy James Franco ), and doggedly sticks with Gilbert's New York life until we're practically screaming at her to get the hell on that plane. In her book Gilbert established in a few quick sentences the total devastation of divorce, but Murphy and his co-screenwriter Jennifer Salt spend much more time telling us much less; when Gilbert arrives in Italy we're intended to feel her thrill of being alone at last, but despite all that exposition we're still struggling to understand this unusual woman able to live the fantasy of leaving it all behind.

There was a sharp realism at the center of Gilbert's book that grounded all the self-obsessed yammering, but all of that, predictably, is absent here. The real Gilbert spent her time in Rome learning how to live life on her own and deliberately resisting romance; movie Gilbert constantly shares meals at tables full of laughing, international faces, and ends her stay with a speech about how lucky she is to be part of a community. The segment at an ashram in India is mostly unscathed, thanks to a beautifully felt performance from Richard Jenkins as a fellow worshipper, but in the movie version Gilbert visits the ashram at the suggestion of her young boyfriend, David, not due to her own spiritual devotion; what was originally a symbol of self-reliance becomes in the movie another example of a woman doing something because a man encouraged her to.

The final section in Bali is the most traditional-- a woman travels to an exotic location, meets an exotically handsome man ( Javier Bardem , delectable), falls in love-- and also the best executed, maybe because all the spirituality of India and hedonism of Italy were harder to translate to the screen. Still, as fun as it is to watch Roberts and Bardem roll around in the sheets and marvel at Bali's exquisite beauty, the real-life Gilbert is once again let down. Her romance with Brazilian Felipe is left deliberately uncertain in the book, written by a woman burned by divorce who has just learned to live for herself again. Movie Gilbert says heated but vague things about not needing to love someone else to prove that she loves herself, but just in time for closing shot she's clambering onto a boat with her love and quite literally riding off into the sunset. It's an immense cop-out, but not surprising given the two and a half hours of platitudes and incredibly simple "tough decisions" that have come before it.

Honestly, this would all be fine if it weren't for the gargantuan running time, which is likely to test the patience of even the most devoted guilty pleasure seekers. Yes, it is fun to sit back and marvel at the scenery and the food and Julia Roberts's enduring star power, and you will walk out of the theater and either immediately book a trip to Bali or, the cheaper option, make a beeline for your neighborhood's best pizza place. Eat Pray Love is an effective and frequently satisfying indulgence, but not nearly as much as the book was, and not as much as it could have been with a little more focus and confidence in its own ideas.

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend

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DVD & Streaming

Eat Pray Love

Drama , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

August 13, 2010
Julia Roberts as Liz Gilbert; Javier Bardem as Felipe; James Franco as David; Richard Jenkins as Richard; Viola Davis as Delia; Billy Crudup as Stephen; Hadi Subiyanto as Ketut Liyer

Home Release Date

November 23, 2010
Ryan Murphy

Distributor

Columbia Pictures

Movie Review

How would you feel if you could live the life you’ve always dreamed of? A great house. A devoted spouse. Adoring and well-behaved children. Interesting friends. Fun activities. A successful career.

You’d be deliriously joyful, right? Grateful? Maybe a little relieved?

In Liz Gilbert’s case, she already has many of these things but is crying-on-the-floor-every-night miserable. Nothing she has carefully constructed her life to be meets her expectations. And now she feels as if she’s trapped in her New York City dream house. Stuck with her committed husband. Floundering among all the color-inside-the-lines clichés she feels her life has become.

She used to marvel. Now she broods. She doesn’t even think she has a pulse anymore. Her once voracious appetite for life now nibbles on the endless everydayness of the world she once dreamed of.

Her solution? To bolt.

Based on the real-life Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir, Eat Pray Love is one woman’s year-long attempt to find unparalleled food and spiritual self-actualization. First, she finds a lover, David. Then she divorces her husband, Stephen—even though he begs her to work on the relationship with him. Then she leaves David, too, and goes to stay with her friend Delia. Eventually Liz jets around the planet to Italy, India and Indonesia to experience life as she thinks it should be lived—with adventure, gourmet goodies, reckless abandon, personal enlightenment and freedom.

In Italy she crams carbs until her new spare tire must be maneuvered into her skinny jeans. At an ashram in India she meets a whiskered Texan named Richard and learns how to “forgive herself” and let go of regret. And in Bali a medicine man named Ketut, a healer woman named Wayan and a sensitive Brazilian lover named Felipe finally lead her to what she believes is peace.

Positive Elements

Stephen correctly calls Liz a quitter when she, for no reason beyond her own nebulous dissatisfaction and angst, wants out of their marriage. He says he loves her, takes his till-death vows very seriously and longs to work on their relationship.

Likewise, Delia is committed to her own marriage and encourages Liz to stay in hers. She tells Liz that she’s acting like a college kid by shirking responsibility and wanting to escape a perfectly wonderful life. Everyone faces doubts and difficulties, she tells Liz, but not everyone runs—they work things out .

Despite Liz’s desertion tactics (and sometimes because of them), the fundamental value of family is well portrayed in this film. Someone goes so far as to say family is the only permanent thing in life.

The movie also highlights the importance of friendships as Liz develops meaningful relationships. And though she’s cosmically confused, Liz does seek something spiritually bigger than she—and her attempts, though misguided, are heartfelt. She also organizes an international effort to raise funds to build Wayan and her young daughter a home. As a surprise for Ketut, Liz has some of his prized papers bound into a book.

Filipe is a loving father who isn’t afraid to express emotion in front of his children. When his 19-year-old son goes back to college after spring break, Filipe cries as the teen leaves—and the boy recognizes his father’s tenderness and affection with great appreciation.

Spiritual Elements

In a touching late-night scene Liz prays to God for what is, apparently, the first time. Her prayer is candid, desperate and utterly vulnerable as she begs Him for a sign and guidance. She then believes she hears God telling her to go back to bed.

During an American Thanksgiving meal in Italy, Liz and her friends thank God for His many blessings. Numerous other people talk about their prayers or are seen praying. Liz tells a joke about praying to a saint.

With Hinduism and Buddhism both seated in India, the country is one of the most spiritually minded places on earth. After visiting a European cathedral or two, Liz’s Asian subcontinent travels take her to an ashram headed by David’s guru, who also owns a retreat center in New York City. There in India, Liz chants and learns meditation before a shrine erected for the guru. Thereafter, she spends a great deal of time practicing her newfound mysticism, trying to fill the void she feels in her soul.

A young Indian girl says she would rather be with her god than a man. Later she is married in a traditional Hindu ceremony. Several Hindu gods are named or painted on walls, and many other spiritual icons are shown. Hindu scriptures are mentioned. Hindus wear prayer necklaces and adorn themselves with tilaks on their foreheads. (Liz too wears a tilak.)

Ketut reads people’s palms, tells their fortunes and gives spiritual advice. He gives Liz a drawing of a godlike creature. He claims that spiritual and emotional balance is the point where heaven and earth meet.

Richard tells Liz that if she could only open her mind the universe and God would rush into it, freeing her. He also tells her to “send some light and love to others.” Maybe these flimsy doctrines help to explain the outlandishness of Liz’s ultimate spiritual conclusion: God dwells in her as her. (If this doesn’t make sense in text, it’s because it doesn’t make much sense in the film either.)

Sexual Content

Couples kiss passionately and caress. Liz and Felipe live together and talk about spending much of their time having sex—an activity that happens off camera. Women wear low-cut and/or short, tight clothing, and Liz is seen in a negligee and bikini. We also see her underwear when she’s trying on jeans. Men go bare-chested and one man strips naked. (The camera shows his chest, back and buttocks close-up as he invites Liz to go skinny-dipping.) Liz is shown in a bathtub, her private parts obscured only by murky water.

It’s said that everyone must have a love affair in Bali. Wayan teases Liz about not having had sex in a long time—and then teases again when Liz and Felipe hook up and Liz develops a bladder infection from what Wayan says is too much sex. Richard mentions the fact that he cheated on his wife repeatedly. Several crude, sexually oriented jokes are made. Slang stands in for sexual body parts. There’s talk of lesbianism, affairs and cheating.

Violent Content

Felipe and Liz meet when he accidentally hits her with his vehicle, knocking her off her bicycle. She tumbles over a stone fence, hitting her head and badly cutting her leg. We see the wound close-up as a healer dresses it.

Wayan briefly tells Liz about her abusive husband’s violence.

Crude or Profane Language

One use of “m‑‑‑‑‑f‑‑‑er” and about 10 uses of the s-word. “Frickin'” stands in for the f-word several times. God’s name is abused a half-dozen times, once with “d‑‑n.” Christ’s name is misused at least twice. Other language includes two or three uses each of “h‑‑‑,” “d‑‑n” and “a‑‑.” We see two or three obscene gestures—including a little girl displaying her middle finger.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Liz and her friends in Italy drink wine with most meals—and sometimes drink too much. So it isn’t surprising when Liz holds up a carafe of vino and jokingly calls it “therapy.” Several other jokes are made about alcohol, including a man saying he’ll grab a beer and his infant. Liz and a potential date do shots at a party and get very drunk.

Richard is a recovering alcoholic and drug abuser. He tells Liz that he was so drunk and high one night he almost drove over his little son. Eventually he lost his job, friends, finances and family to his addictions. Liz jokes about always needing a Xanax.

Other Negative Elements

In an apparent attempt to assuage her guilt, Liz has an imaginary conversation with Stephen in which she “resolves” their conflict. This is enough to help her move on, but unfortunately, it does nothing for the real Stephen’s heartache and frustration.

A man crudely mentions his baby’s dirty diaper.

I’m pretty certain Ms. Gilbert doesn’t see any irony in the fact that all the countries she chose to visit begin with the letter I . But to me that letter seems fitting. Her neatly camouflaged self-absorption makes up much of Eat Pray Love . And I could never truly understand her reason for feeling utterly despondent—apart from the fact that she was usually looking for her own personal fulfillment and no one else’s.

Exploring one’s dreams and spirituality are good things when they’re pursued with less selfish motives. But Liz is rarely selfless, even though real-life Elizabeth and director Ryan Murphy would have us feel sorry for her. After all, despite her desperate unhappiness, she still has the gutsy gumption to overcome her despair and seek the life she’s always longed for— again . Regrettably, she does this even if it means ignoring wedding vows and hurting others along the way. In this film, it seems that pursuing your own happiness and “completion” is tantamount to godliness.

Perhaps what’s saddest about Eat Pray Love , however, is the fact that Liz genuinely asks all the right questions (What am I here to accomplish? Who is God? How do I know Him?) but quiets them with all the wrong, mostly self-seeking and muddled answers.

Like so many before her, Liz has turned her back on a godly religious conviction and morality, and sought a less challenging spiritual system instead. A system that requires only vaguely sending “light and love” to others rather than buckling down and fighting for a covenant relationship’s survival and growth when things are emotionally difficult. A system that encourages sweetly masked self-indulgence over real self-sacrifice, and salvation without real repentance. Instead of God and His majesty, Ms. Gilbert wants cheap grace to help her get through her needlessly miserable days.

Now, it’s reported, many other middle-aged women are reading her memoir and following in her footsteps—even to Italy, India and Indonesia—for their own angst-ridden, navel-gazing journeys away from “unsatisfying” lives that most people around the world only dream of having. This movie will only inspire more of them.

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Eat Pray Love (United States, 2010)

Eat Pray Love is a muddle of a film - an overlong bore that either mistakenly thinks it's something more than a humdrum romance or has incorporated a variety of pretentions as window-dressing. In either case, the movie's quasi-preachy attitude effectively counterbalances whatever charm Julia Roberts brings to the proceedings. Eat Pray Love 's trite, platitude-laden "philosophy" embraces concepts perfect for our post-modern society: God lies within, self-forgiveness is the road to enlightenment, and it doesn't matter how many people you hurt as long as you're happy in the end. The movie is banal; the underlying doctrine is dubious. Now I can understand why the source material has received as much scorn as it has inspired devotion.

Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) is going through a mid-life crisis. She is bored with her upper middle class Manhattan lifestyle and wants to do something else but, like an indecisive college student, she doesn't know what. So she dumps her devoted husband, Stephen (Billy Crudup), and takes up with a young, hunky actor (James Franco). If you don't dislike the lead character by this point, give it time - that will come. Eventually, she tires of the actor and heads overseas to find herself. Her first stop is Rome, where she spends four months indulging one of the deadly sins: gluttony. Then it's off to India, to live in an ashram and learn how to meditate. There she meets Richard from Texas (Richard Jenkins), whose revelations about his own sad life show Liz the path to enlightenment. Finally, she travels to Bali, where she hangs around a fortuneteller and falls for a sexy Brazilian, Felipe (Javier Bardem), who, like Liz, isn't looking for love when it finds him.

It's hard to decide which is Eat Pray Love 's least appealing and most appalling quality: its needless 135-minute running time, its mealy philosophizing, or the deplorable nature of the lead character. In general terms, there's no rule that a protagonist has to be likeable but, in Liz's case, it's obvious we are intended not merely to like her, but to identify with her. The casting of Julia Roberts is intended to stack the deck. One doesn't hire this particular actress to play a shallow, self-absorbed woman unless the intention is for us to accompany her on an amazing, transformative journey. Although that may be the intention, it isn't what happens, perhaps because such a spiritual apotheosis is difficult for even the most accomplished director to convey (a category in which Ryan Murphy, who's currently embroiled in the TV series Glee , does not fit). What we end up with is an individual who's not fundamentally different at the end than at the beginning, and whom we're supposed to forgive because a few throw-away cut scenes show that the people she discarded are living happy lives without her.

In many ways, the central philosophy of Eat Pray Love (the movie), which may or may not be governed by the guiding principles spelled out in Elizabeth Gilbert's book, fits well with today's "me-first" attitude. The story focuses on self-gratification, self-fulfillment, and self-discovery. It's all about "self," even though there are times when a little self-abnegation is needed to get to the finish line. I'd be less irritated by the movie's philosophical foundation if it avoided sermonizing. Are the filmmakers seeking viewers or converts?

Roberts does her best to make Liz appealing, but it's a losing battle. She smooths some of the rough edges, which serves to make the protagonist bland and unmemorable rather than detestable. There are some interesting secondary characters, most of whom are on screen for far too little time. The best of these is Richard from Texas, who is played with dignity by character actor Richard Jenkins. The scene in which Richard conveys his sad history represents the best five minutes in the movie, and nothing else comes close. Javier Bardem is stuck in the thankless role of the love interest, and he doesn't appear until the movie has overstayed its welcome. Watching him, I couldn't help wishing he'd pull out the oxygen tank and use it on Liz.

When it comes to employing exotic locales as a backdrop for a character-based story, Murphy could learn a thing or two from Rubba Nada, whose Cairo Time successfully interweaves travelogue elements into a narrative-based feature. The best Eat Pray Love does is to incorporate some throw-way establishing shots. In Cairo Time , I felt like I was in Egypt. In Eat Pray Love , I felt like I was thumbing through the photo album of someone who spent some time in Italy (eat), India (pray), and Indonesia (love).

Perhaps the most damning indictment I can offer regarding Eat Pray Love is that it's interminable. As the running time stretches toward what seems to be infinity, the average viewer is likely to glance and his or her watch with increasing frequency. Occasional taps on the face are understandable because the minute hand may seem to either be moving too slowly or to have stopped altogether. Perhaps members of the film's target demographic, of which I am not a member, will immerse themselves with wistful pleasure in what Eat Pray Love offers. If so, good for them. For me, the problem isn't the estrogen overdose, it's the attempted indoctrination into a philosophy I find repugnant.

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Eat pray love, common sense media reviewers.

Find-your-bliss film appeals but raises questions, too.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie suggests that when you find yourself liv

Liz is lost in the beginning of the movie. She doe

Couples kiss tenderly. Lots of flirtation, some re

Words used include "s--t," "screw,&

Not many labels, but the book and the movie have e

Some social drinking at parties, bars, and restaur

Positive Messages

The movie suggests that when you find yourself living a life that turns out to not be what you wanted or dreamed of, it’s time to reboot, even if that means a complete overhaul. Yes, feelings will get hurt, and the pain may last for months or even years. But the risk is worth it, the movie says, to find happiness.

Positive Role Models

Liz is lost in the beginning of the movie. She doesn’t like the life she has, and she doesn’t know how to get the one she wants. She opts to take big risks to seek wisdom and joy, which is admirable. But there are casualties in her search for enlightenment.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Couples kiss tenderly. Lots of flirtation, some references to “sexy time,” and talk about a woman's need to end her self-prescribed celibacy. In one scene, a man strips down and asks the main character to go skinny dipping -- viewers see his bare backside a couple of times.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Words used include "s--t," "screw," "ass," “goddamn," "hell," "damn," "oh my God," and “bulls--," plus one “motherf---er.”

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Not many labels, but the book and the movie have encouraged many Eat Pray Love -inspired product tie-ins

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Some social drinking at parties, bars, and restaurants. A woman gets drunk at a a party and suffers a huge hangover the morning after. Some references in casual conversation to Xanax and meth.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this romantic drama based on the best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert examines what happens when a woman walks away from the life (and husband) she knows to travel the world in search of meaning, balance, and joy. That's fairly heavy material for tweens, which is part of why this movie is more age-appropriate for teens and adults, who will be better able to appreciate the movie's life lessons. Expect some discussions about sex, celibacy, and relationships; a few glimpses of a naked male butt; and some swearing (including "s--t" and one "motherf---er") and drinking (including one scene in which a character gets quite drunk). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (6)
Kids say (12)

Based on 6 parent reviews

Well-Made, Thought-Provoking, and Beautiful Film; Too Racy For Kids

What's the story.

Writer Elizabeth Gilbert ( Julia Roberts ) suddenly finds herself feeling trapped in a marriage she doesn't want, in a life she didn't envision. Despite the fact that she chose to fashion that very life, now she wants out -- and that realization will destroy her husband ( Billy Crudup ) and worry her friends. A love affair with a young actor ( James Franco ) isn't the answer, and neither is disappearing into her sorrows. So she decides to go to Italy, where she hopes to rediscover her passion for food, and, perhaps, life; to India, where she seeks spiritual connection; and to Bali, where she may finally forgive herself. It's there that she meets a Brazilian man ( Javier Bardem ) who just might convince her that love is worth the risk.

Is It Any Good?

All hail Julia Roberts: As Elizabeth Gilbert's avatar in this cinematic adaptation of the bestselling memoir Eat Pray Love , she's luminous and beautiful. Her faint wrinkles assure us that she hasn't been Botoxed or plastic-surgeried to death, and she's every bit the likable America's sweetheart she's known to be. With her in the starring role, a supporting cast filled with the likes of Bardem, Franco, Crudup, Viola Davis, and Richard Jenkins , and an inspired-by-real-life story set against some of the most photogenic locales in the world, how can it go wrong?

On one level, it doesn't. The film is convincingly stirring, and it hits all of the emotional notes that movies like these are supposed to hit. It's dreamy, it makes you think, and it even makes you cry. But poetic and unforgettable it's not. Some moments have been fashioned with heavy hands; you can feel the filmmakers pushing you to Feel Something. The film skates over why Liz can't abide the life she leads and the wreckage she leaves behind. And it incites the same debate that the book itself did: Is this chronicling a so-called self-indulgent journey that only the affluent can embark upon? Is it superficial? Or is it transformative? And does that matter when the film is, yes, entertaining?

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the movie's messages. Who do you think it's trying to reach? What is it saying to that audience?

Liz finds her bliss through a complete change in scenery, literally and figuratively. How realistic is this option for most people? What do you think would have happened if she hadn't been able to escape?

What eventually persuades Liz to leave her husband? Is her struggle relatable? Believable?

Movie Details

In theaters : August 13, 2010
On DVD or streaming : November 23, 2010
Cast : Billy Crudup , Javier Bardem , Julia Roberts
Director : Ryan Murphy
Inclusion Information : Gay directors, Female actors
Studio : Columbia Pictures
Genre : Drama
Run time : 133 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : brief strong language, some sexual references and male rear nudity
Last updated : December 20, 2023

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Movie Review: Eat Pray Love

More dislikable than Johnny Borrell in a Chelsea FC shirt

Published in 2006, but on bestseller lists seemingly much longer than that, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love is the true story travelogue of the author’s journey into Italy, India and Indonesia as she attempts to understand who she is and what she wants in the wake of a broken marriage. It’s one of those books enjoyed predominantly by women who own toe rings, read Psychologies magazine and enjoy Ani De Franco records.

Or, as I like to call them, stupid, self-absorbed, we hate poor people, might-get-a-Henna-tattoo idiots.

I’m being a touch harsh. There’s subtle nuances to the book I haven’t explained that leave you in no doubt of the good Gilbert’s physical, spiritual and emotional journey does her. Sadly, like the punctuation removed from the movies title in the transition from book to screen – few of these make it into the film.

And the film is an absolute shocker.

Primarily, the problem with Eat Pray Love is in the set up. Unlike the book, director Ryan Murphy (creator of Nip/Tuck and Glee ) and co-writer Jennifer Salt ( Murder She Cunting Wrote ) spend little time fleshing out the character of Gilbert’s husband, played with all the depth and softness of a piece of sandpaper by Billy Crudup.

Unlike the book, Gilbert’s principal reason for leaving her man appears to be that he’s decided to leave his job and go back to college. But she appears callous for walking out the door in order to better her life when she’s leaving someone she previously loved who also wants to do just that (just with books and stuff instead of Air Miles).

But it gets worse. Gilbert is no Shirley Valentine , her husband doesn’t treat her badly, she’s well educated, she has a plush house – all soft furnishings and those stupid fucking plants that people who own art galleries in Brighton have – she has friends – I’m still looking for the straw that broke the camel having a midlife crisis here – and the film never once explains how she can afford to pack up her life and dick around the globe (or rather, it neglects to mention that Gilbert was actually a commercially successful writer who had one of her pieces turned into Coyote Ugly in 2000).

I don’t want to sound like fucking Bono, but in a world where some people can’t afford to eat, and where many don’t have a home – let alone can’t afford Prada – the movie take on Gilbert couldn’t be more thoroughly dislikable if she made a brief detour en route to Indonesia and did a shit in the mouth of an African child.

So it’s a good job she’s played by Julia Roberts, eh? I mean, nobody dislikes Julia Roberts. She’s got such wonderful teeth! She looks like she could bite through the Golden Gate Bridge and still look ravishing at dinner! She’s so pretty! Well, you could have cast my mum in the lead role and I still would have despised her every eyelash flutter. I could make a Top 20 list of scenes in the film that made me despise the existence of the human race, but instead I’m going to Google some pictures of bunny rabbits to stop myself from committing a murder. Still, the bit in the segment in Italy where she comes to “value the taste of real spaghetti” is beyond loathable.

In many ways I don’t even consider Eat Pray Love a film. I see it as more akin to a very well made travel brochure (begrudgingly I’d admit the cinematography is outstanding) adapted for the screen. But what I do consider it to be is ethically void, morally corrupt, with shit for brains and no understanding of the world outside of its own head. It’s like going on an episode of Come Dine With Me with the cast of Loose Women EVERY NIGHT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, or being trapped inside the verse of a Tori Amos song.

Eat Pray Love is going to be number one at the box office for months. It’s going to be a massive deal. And each and every one of you who enjoys it is going to Hell.

James McMahon

Movie Review: “Eat Pray Love”

11 comments

World-travel, on its own, has always had an amazing appeal – learning about different routes of life, history, art, culture, architecture, people, food, and experiencing the kindness of strangers along the way. Born and raised in Indonesia, I was one of those kids who dreamed to travel around the world and believed that there’s something more out there for me.

While the story has all the ingredients of a best-selling book, the film is overwhelmingly underwhelming, not to mention running long past its time for this type of tale. Broken down into three segments (or four, if you count the prologue in New York) – Italy, India, Bali – it sweeps the details of Gilbert’s (Julia Roberts’) life events under the glossy cover.

Roberts (bless her heart), with her warmth and down-to-earth vibe, does the best she can and hopes that we will root for her. The backstory with the husband (Billy Crudup) doesn’t depict the struggles and fights, those irreconcilable differences in a marriage that would lead to her exit. Instead, it’s as if Gilbert wakes up one day and decides she’s fallen out of love. The only moment where I could feel the emptiness she feels about her life is during her desperate prayer. This is a moment where she asks for guidance from above to tell her what to do.

Hopping into an affair right after the split with her husband, Gilbert jumps into a relationship with a young Broadway actor that looks like James Franco. All her life she’s always in some sort of relationship, so this is not surprising.

The film fails to mention that Gilbert received payment in advance for her globe trotting from her publisher, and it does beg the question whether she would have gone without it. It makes the reality less ‘authentic’ than if she would “go for broke” and embark on the quest “just because.”

A soul-searching journey, the longing to discover more about oneself and something greater resonates well, especially these days where it’s easy to become disillusioned.

Italy embodies the “eat” portion of the book and is a feast for foodies. Aside from the historic ruins and language, the parade of good food and fine wine showcases Italy as a culinary marvel. The hilarious hand-gestures and wee-hours of the morning of Thanksgiving dinner highlight this sojourn. It is true that there’s a difference between pleasure and merely entertainment.

India, “pray,” is in stark contrast to Italy. From the slum to the ashram, it’s certainly a contrast to Italy. India is where the human connections seem most genuine. There’s a moment in time where Gilbert connects with an Indian girl being thrown into an arranged marriage. There are meaningful walks and talks with Richard (Richard Jenkins), an American from Texas who shares his painful past and relationship with his family.

Here Gilbert learns that just because she is at the center of a sacred place, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she would feel more present. All the meditation and devotion won’t do anything as long as she’s in the pity-party mode. Harmony and happiness are not to be pursued; they’re already inside if only she could clear her mind and heart, trust and let things happen.

The beauty of Bali, “love,” is shown through the rain-forests, terraced rice paddies and tropical flowers. Gilbert re-connects with Ketut Liyer, a Balinese palm-reader and healer who she met previously. She gets to know Wayan, a divorced woman with her daughter. Wayan treats Gilbert’s leg injury after her bike was nearly run over by a jeep-driving Brazilian, Felipe (Javier Bardem). Felipe is her soon-to-be lover and husband, which all seems a little out of nowhere and a bit rushed.

In the end, “Eat Pray Love” is passable but not palatable enough. When the interactions among the characters are not believable, it’s hard to care. Instead of genuine emotional healing and spiritual awakening, Gilbert is simply swimming along from on set of events to another. “Eat Pray Love” is more of a romanticized travelogue, rather than a truly transformative one.

Nathalia Aryani is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic (rottentomatoes.com/critic/nathalia-aryani). She has a movie blog, The MovieMaven (sdmoviemaven.blogspot.com). Twitter: @the_moviemaven. She can be reached at [email protected] .

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Movie Review: ‘Eat Pray Love’

August 13, 2010 By Adam Mehring 18 Comments

It’s quite ironic that Eat Pray Love , the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling memoir, is being pegged as “boring” or “uneventful.” It is in these very qualities—the estimations of our immediate perceptions, or reactions from a persistent quest for superficial gratification—that the film cautions against placing value. Rather, Eat Pray Love champions soul-searching in quiet spaces and, ultimately, everyday places.

To uncover this truth, however, writer Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) must depart from the everyday. She divorces her husband of eight years (Billy Crudup), leaving behind an unfulfilling daily routine to embark on a journey of self-reflection and personal discovery. First, a rebound romance (and a wholly unnecessary story segment) with a younger man (James Franco); then, the title’s promise: eating in Italy, prayer in India, and love, finally, in Bali, Indonesia.

Each chapter moves along leisurely yet gracefully, handled with care and precision by director Ryan Murphy. The pace is deliberately slow, and the impact is slow to coalesce. Neither Murphy’s direction nor his script, penned in tandem with Jennifer Salt, assaults with life lessons or teachable moments, and Liz’s journey is overseen by a certain self-awareness—a proper suspicion in its own premise—that prevents the story from feeling preachy or didactic. It’s refreshing that a film is able convey a point of view without pounding us over the head or intruding on our own sensibilities.

The weight of Eat Pray Love is never obvious, but it does ever-so-slowly seep into the edges of the frame, like the heavenly aura of sunlight poking through cracks in ancient walls, or the fuzzy glow of headlights reflected in bubbles of rain on a car’s windshield, or feathery parmesan flakes floating toward a destination of noodles.

On a few occasions, a swirl of present motion morphs into a memory for Liz: a memory of her life pre-sabbatical, often involving her now ex-husband. Here we can apply the pleasant pull of the present to the gentle, even joyful tug of the past. The mere proposition, entirely underutilized by the film, of stepping back into the real world, of examining the deficits of a former existence, is stirring—disquieting as much as it is quietly depicted.

Too quiet, perhaps, are the simple pleasures stacked throughout the film. Murphy handles the material so carefully that at times he seems hesitant to tackle anything that could prove even slightly jarring. Liz befriends a man from Texas while practicing prayer in India, and when he, named Richard and portrayed by a sensitive Richard Jenkins, describes his falling-out with his family back home, we see him only from the side. It’s as if Murphy was afraid that Richard Jenkins’ distraught face might crack the camera lens. A lengthy catharsis is muted, and a potential power chord is wasted.

Similarly, the film doesn’t get too specific about the sticky situation that drove Liz away from her former life. An anxious gaze, an unnerving atmosphere, and words—Liz’s admission of discontent—are all we have to go on. (Indeed, we witness most of the film’s events—the desires, the transformations, and the general goings-on—but seldom do we feel them.)

It’s a good thing, then, that we are in the company of so many trusting faces: Viola Davis and Mike O’Malley as Liz’s friends and a functional married pair, the aforementioned Billy Crudup, James Franco, and Richard Jenkins, an eventual lover in Javier Bardem, and, lest we should forget, Ms. Roberts herself.

Julia Roberts carries the film elegantly and effortlessly. Did we expect anything less? There is never any question that she (or Liz, for that matter) is entirely committed to the journey. Though the role does not require too much from her beyond the skill of slight gesture and subtle expression, the far-too-few times she is allowed to further extend herself, Roberts’ ear-to-ear grin and infectious cackle reignite the screen.

That’s not to say the flame of the film ever truly dies: it’s a slow burn that flickers occasionally, offering gentle insight but lacking the punch of resonance. And even though the film is a tad too long and relies a bit too often on mainstream machinations—caricaturized local players, pizza and pasta (and not much else) in Italy, and an M.I.A. song heralding our arrival in India—it’s hard to come down too hard on something so sensibly crafted with such good intentions.

Directed by Ryan Murphy. Written by Ryan Murphy & Jennifer Salt. Rated PG-13 (a light PG-13) for brief strong language (very brief), some sexual references (very slight) and male rear nudity (one, maybe two, nude rears). Runtime is 2 hours, 13 minutes.

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Eat Pray Love

A married woman realizes how unhappy her marriage really is, and that her life needs to go in a different direction. After a painful divorce, she takes off on a round-the-world journey to "find herself".
Liz Gilbert (Roberts) had everything a modern woman is supposed to dream of having--a husband, a house, a successful career--yet like so many others, she felt lost, confused, and unsure of what she really wanted in life. Newly-divorced and at a crossroads, Gilbert steps out of her comfort zone, risking everything to change her life, embarking on a journey around the world that becomes a quest for self-discovery. In her travels, she discovers the true pleasure of nourishment by eating in Italy; the power of prayer in India; and, finally and unexpectedly, the inner peace and balance of true love in Bali. — Sony Pictures
Writer Elizabeth Gilbert has reached a crisis of faith in her life. Without her husband Stephen realizing it, they have arrived at diverging places in their life, and she admits that she wants out of their marriage. Following Liz and Stephen's divorce, Liz immediately jumps into a relationship with actor David Piccolo, whom she meets literally while he is performing in a stage play. After spending time with David, she realizes that she is her biggest problem, and that she needs to find herself. Partly based on earlier foretellings of a Balinese medicine man, Liz maps out her next year, which will be spent in three places. The first is Italy to learn Italian and regain her love of food, which has now become more a matter a sustenance. The second is India at the ashram of David's yogi to achieve spiritual peace. And third is Indonesia to reconnect with medicine man Ketut Liyer to see if he can provide any more insights into her life. Although she sticks to her geographic plan, she often experiences things along the way that she didn't expect. But everything she worked so hard to achieve, that much-needed balance in life over the year, may all be lost by the end of her stay in Indonesia. — Huggo

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Why Are Divorce Memoirs Still Stuck in the 1960s?

Recent best sellers have reached for a familiar feminist credo, one that renounces domestic life for career success.

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An illustration of a laptop computer dropping inside a stew pot, along with a tomato, an apron, a spoon and a spice shaker.

By Sarah Menkedick

Sarah Menkedick’s most recent book is “Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America.”

“The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own,” Betty Friedan wrote in “ The Feminine Mystique ,” in 1963. Taking a new role as a productive worker is “the way out of the trap,” she added. “There is no other way.”

On the final page of “ This American Ex-Wife ,” her 2024 memoir and study of divorce, Lyz Lenz writes: “I wanted to remove myself from the martyr’s pyre and instead sacrifice the roles I had been assigned at birth: mother, wife, daughter. I wanted to see what else I could be.”

More than 60 years after Friedan’s landmark text, there remains only one way for women to gain freedom and selfhood: rejecting the traditionally female realm, and achieving career and creative success.

Friedan’s once-provocative declaration resounds again in a popular subgenre of autobiography loosely referred to as the divorce memoir, several of which have hit best-seller lists in the past year or two. These writers’ candid, raw and moving exposés of their divorces are framed as a new frontier of women’s liberation, even as they reach for a familiar white feminist ideology that has prevailed since “The Problem That Has No Name,” through “Eat, Pray, Love” and “I’m With Her” and “Lean In”: a version of second-wave feminism that remains tightly shackled to American capitalism and its values.

Lenz, for example, spends much of her book detailing her struggle to “get free,” but never feels she needs to define freedom. It is taken as a given that freedom still means the law firm partner in heels, the self-made woman with an independent business, the best-selling author on book tour — the woman who has shed any residue of the domestic and has finally come to shine with capitalist achievement.

It is not the freedom for a woman to stay home with her child for a year, or five. The freedom to stop working after a lifetime toiling in low-wage jobs. The freedom for a Filipina nanny to watch her own children instead of those of her “liberated” American boss. The freedom to start a farm or a homestead or engage in the kind of unpaid work ignored by an economy that still values above all else the white-collar professional labor long dominated by men — and in fact mostly fails to recognize other labor as valuable at all.

One of the paradoxes the divorce memoir highlights is that women’s work is made invisible by a society that disparages it, and the only way it becomes visible is through the triumphant narrative of a woman’s escape from it — which only reinforces its undesirability and invisibility.

In Maggie Smith’s 2023 memoir “ You Could Make This Place Beautiful ,” Smith details the critical inflection point when her poem “ Good Bones ” goes viral, her career takes off and her marriage begins to implode. She tells a reporter from The Columbus Dispatch: “I feel like I go into a phone booth and I turn into a poet sometimes. Most of the other time, I’m just Maggie who pushes the stroller.”

Nothing threatening, nothing meaningful. Just a mom pushing the stroller in the meager labor of women — until she slips into the phone booth and transforms into an achieving superhero.

This is not to diminish Smith’s work, a unique and highly refined series of linked essays that build into an emotional symphony about marital breakdown. Her intention is not, like Lenz’s, to condemn the institution of marriage or to rejoice in her release from hers, which is complicated, excruciating and tender. Her depictions of divorce clearly resonate with readers and offer solace and insight into a common experience of heartbreak. But it’s worth asking what exactly is being celebrated in the huge cultural reception her memoir, and other popular divorce memoirs, have received.

Leslie Jamison’s book “ Splinters ,” published the same day as “This American Ex-Wife,” is an exquisite, textured and precise articulation of the collapse of her marriage, all nuance and interiority where Lenz’s writing is blunt and political. But here, too, we get a female narrator for whom freedom and acceptance ultimately signify professional success. Jamison is much more vexed about this formula, but in the end she settles for lightly querying rather than assailing it. She jokes about how her editor is stressed about book sales while she’s stressed about her baby sleeping on airplanes, and mocks this as a “humblebrag”: “ I don’t care about ambition! I only care about baby carriers! ” She rushes to clarify in the next sentence, “Of course I cared about book sales, too.”

Herein lies the ultimate paradigm, the space no woman wants to explore: What if the modern woman didn’t actually care about book sales? About making partner? About building a successful brand? That would be unthinkable. Embarrassing. Mealy, mushy, female.

But later in “Splinters,” Jamison skewers the cult of male, capitalist achievement: “My notion of divinity was gradually turning its gaze away from the appraising, tally-keeping, pseudo-father in the sky who would give me enough gold stars if I did enough good things, and toward the mother who’d been here all along,” she writes. I felt an electric optimism reading this. If feminism wants to tackle patriarchy, it needs to start with that pseudo-father and his metrics of a person’s worth.

Jamison struggles toward this in “Splinters.” She wants so badly to be remarkable. To banter about the Russian G.D.P. while she spoon-feeds her toddler, or to impress arrogant lovers who critique her conversation as only “85 percent as good as it could be.” At the same time, she yearns “to experience the sort of love that could liberate everyone involved from their hamster wheels of self-performance,” a love that will “involve all your tedious moments.”

Yes , I found myself saying, I want to read about this love . A mother love that is radical, creative, affirming, even and especially in its difficulty and tedium. Jamison almost gets there, but returns ultimately to the affirmation that it’s OK to want more: “quiet mornings at my laptop, tap-tap-tapping at my keyboard.”

It is certainly OK, and natural, to want more. But what I find most exhilarating in this beautiful book is the possibility that it’s also OK to let go of wanting. It’s OK to not write a best seller, to not hold a prestigious title, to not start your own brand. It’s OK, even, to not try to find yourself, that most American of quests.

Divorce, sure. Ditch the toxic men, strike out on your own. But there’s nothing new or radical there. The radical is in a feminism that examines care as profound, powerful work and centers rather than marginalizes mothering, as both a lived act and a metaphor. We must let go of this half-century-old notion that the self can be “found” only after the roles of “mother, wife, daughter” have been rejected.

With friends, Jamison recounts lively anecdotes from a trip to Oslo with her daughter in order to prove that her life had not “‘gotten small,’ a phrase I put in quotes in my mind, though I did not know whom I was quoting.” Yet in this phrase lies another way of living: letting things get small, in a world that sees and celebrates mostly superlatives, and getting down to the level of the local, the intimate, the granular, the home.

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The Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, who died on May 14 , specialized in exacting short stories that were novelistic in scope , spanning decades with intimacy and precision.

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Eat Pray Love movie review & film summary (2010)
Elizabeth Gilbert's book "Eat, Pray, Love," unread by me, spent 150 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and is by some accounts a good one. It is also movie material, concerning as it does a tall blond (Gilbert) who ditches a failing marriage and a disastrous love affair to spend a year living in Italy, India and Bali seeking to find the balance of body, mind and spirit.
Eat Pray Love
In Theaters At Home TV Shows. Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) thought she had everything she wanted in life: a home, a husband and a successful career. Now newly divorced and facing a turning point ...
Eat Pray Love
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 16, 2023. Mariana Tinoco Rivera En Filme. Unlike the original source, Eat Pray Love presents a flawless caricature that's on an idyllic, hiccup-free trip in ...
Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem in 'Eat Pray Love'
WITH: Julia Roberts (Liz Gilbert), James Franco (David Piccolo), Richard Jenkins (Richard From Texas), Viola Davis (Delia Shiraz), Billy Crudup (Stephen), Javier Bardem (Felipe), Giuseppe Gandini ...
Eat Pray Love
Meets wise old Texan, sweet Indian girl, dynamic Italian-speaking Swede who thinks "Vaffanculo" means "screw you". Roberts eats up the oxygen, preys on credulous cinemagoers, loves what she sees ...
Eat Pray Love (2010)
Eat Pray Love: Directed by Ryan Murphy. With Julia Roberts, I. Gusti Ayu Puspawati, Hadi Subiyanto, Billy Crudup. A married woman realizes how unhappy her marriage really is, and that her life needs to go in a different direction. After a painful divorce, she takes off on a round-the-world journey to "find herself".
Eat Pray Love
In "Eat Pray Love," Julia Robert's character, Liz Gilbert, takes a holiday from her miserable life as a well-respected, financially secure New York writer, loved by men she cannot love back ...
Movie Review
Movie Review - 'Eat Pray Love' - Have Bucks, ... Eat, Pray, Love, was a smash hit. Now Gilbert's best-seller has been adapted into a wannabe blockbuster starring a sun-kissed Julia Roberts.
Movie review: 'Eat Pray Love'
By Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times Film Critic. Aug. 13, 2010 12 AM PT. If there is one constant in "Eat Pray Love," the imperfect yet beautifully rendered adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's ...
Eat Pray Love: movie review
In 'Eat Pray Love,' Julia Roberts plays a newly divorced 30-something in search of herself, based on Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir. Francois Duhamel/Sony/AP Julia Roberts is shown in a scene from ...
Eat Pray Love
Eat Pray Love is a 2010 American biographical romantic drama film starring Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert, based on Gilbert's 2006 memoir of the same name. Ryan Murphy co-wrote and directed the film, which was released in the United States on August 13, 2010. It received mixed reviews from critics, but was a financial success, grossing $204.6 million worldwide against a $60 million budget.
Eat Pray Love
For all the things Eat Pray Love does right, it must constantly overcome its cardinal sin of turning a quick little book into a bloated monster of a movie.Eat Pray Love is nearly two and a half ...
Eat Pray Love
To bolt. Based on the real-life Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir, Eat Pray Love is one woman's year-long attempt to find unparalleled food and spiritual self-actualization. First, she finds a lover, David. Then she divorces her husband, Stephen—even though he begs her to work on the relationship with him.
Eat Pray Love (2010)
Albeit that the (non sexual, or invisible sexual) romance dominates above the spiritual message. The movie is a bit on the soft side though: without raw, real emotions. And another note: the characters operate all in humid warm environments, but their hair stays too shampooed, and the clothes too ironed.
Eat, Pray, Love
G154.5.G55 A3 2006. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia is a 2006 memoir by American author Elizabeth Gilbert. The memoir chronicles the author's trip around the world after her divorce and what she discovered during her travels. She wrote and named the book while living at The Oliver Hotel on ...
Eat, Pray, Love
All these impulses characterize Elizabeth Gilbert's wildly successful spiritual memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which was published in 2006, endorsed by Oprah's Book Club, and spent three years on The New York Times bestseller list. Now Ryan Murphy ( Running with Scizzors and TV's Glee) has directed a sensuous and emotionally cathartic screen version ...
Eat Pray Love
Eat Pray Love (United States, 2010) August 11, 2010. A movie review by James Berardinelli. Eat Pray Love is a muddle of a film - an overlong bore that either mistakenly thinks it's something more than a humdrum romance or has incorporated a variety of pretentions as window-dressing. In either case, the movie's quasi-preachy attitude effectively ...
Eat Pray Love Movie Review
A romantic drama based on the best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, starring Julia Roberts as a woman who travels the world in search of meaning, balance, and joy. The film is stirring, dreamy, and makes you think, but also raises questions about its message and realism.
Movie Review: Eat Pray Love
Movie Review: Eat Pray Love. Published in 2006, but on bestseller lists seemingly much longer than that, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love is the true story travelogue of the author's ...
Movie Review: "Eat Pray Love"
Movie Review: "Eat Pray Love". Even without having read Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir, "Eat Pray Love," moviegoers can still have something to look forward to in the film adaptation. At the ...
Movie Review: 'Eat Pray Love'
It's quite ironic that Eat Pray Love, the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's bestselling memoir, is being pegged as "boring" or "uneventful."It is in these very qualities—the estimations of our immediate perceptions, or reactions from a persistent quest for superficial gratification—that the film cautions against placing value.
Eat Pray Love (2010)
A married woman realizes how unhappy her marriage really is, and that her life needs to go in a different direction. After a painful divorce, she takes off on a round-the-world journey to "find herself". Liz Gilbert (Roberts) had everything a modern woman is supposed to dream of having--a husband, a house, a successful career--yet like so many ...
Review: 'Eat, Pray, Love,' by Elizabeth Gilbert (Published 2021)
EAT, PRAY, LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert | Review first published Feb. 28, 2006. Early on in "Eat, Pray, Love," her travelogue of spiritual seeking, the novelist and journalist Elizabeth Gilbert ...
Why Are Divorce Memoirs Still Stuck in the 1960s?
May 25, 2024, 5:00 a.m. ET. "The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own," Betty Friedan wrote in " The Feminine ...

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