Eat Pray Love

Review by Anthony Morris

After a failed marriage and a mis‑judged rebound romance, New York writer Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) decides to find herself by spending a year overseas, stopping at Italy and India before wrapping things up in Bali. 

Sadly for those hoping against hope that this thin premise would turn out to be the set‑up for a spy thriller or earth‑shattering romance, what you see is what you get.

And you get a hell of a lot of it thanks to a two hour‑plus running time...

The limpness of the opening love‑lorn scenes (Billy Crudup is her husband, James Franco her rebound lover : neither seems like a keeper) makes her overseas trip seem like a second chance for the film to become entertaining - and then the cliches become overwhelming.

Italian men are kind of sexist! Look, spaghetti! Indians have arranged marriages! 

Liz makes friends everywhere she goes and all her dramas are internal, so the travel is merely a mirror reflecting back her self‑obsessed angst. 

All this would be fine if her angst was actually interesting and not just "I just got out of a bad relationship, time to eat some food, buy fat pants and meditate". 

Things liven up slightly when Javier Bardem arrives in Bali and starts making the moves on Liz, but sadly it turns out Liz was going through all this soul‑searching just so she'd be able to love again. 

Really? 

Kind of hard to imagine a two hour plus film about a man doing a similar amount of soul-searching ending with him saying "And then I found true love, the end". Still, while this is totally vapid, it's never actually hateful thanks largely to Roberts' charisma.  

If you've ever wondered what kind of film it'd be appropriate to talk (or text) through, Eat Pray Love is that film.

2.5 out of 5

Eat Pray Love
Australian release: 7th October, 2010
Official Site: Eat Pray Love
Cast: Julia Roberts, James Franco, Javier Bardem, Billy Crudup, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis
Director: Ryan Murphy