Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
8/23/10
It's interesting once in
a while to see a movie that allows you to check in with a world of which
you are not a part. Don't get me wrong; I'm a highly screwed-up guy
and am not averse to picking up a little advice and perspective along the
way to try and help right the Good Ship Lamar, but I'm not a believer in
the Self Help Bestseller culture that spawned Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth
Gilbert's blockbuster tome turned feel-good Julia Roberts vehicle.
Yes, yes, I know that EPL is a memoir as opposed to a flat-out “tell
me what to do!” book like He's Just Not That Into You, but the point
of the exercise is still to suggest that the key to your happiness lies
in following, either literally or figuratively, in Gilbert's footsteps.
And while watching the movie, I spent a lot of time contemplating the possible
value in this sort of second-hand standardized epiphany. I'm not
really persuaded: the film, for my money, simply blends selfishness
and cafeteria religiosity and calls the result personal growth. But
it is mounted with maximum effort by co-writer/director Ryan Murphy and
a first-rate cast without which it would very likely be unbearable.
I accept that Eat Pray Love is intended for an audience that does
not include me, but I still can't help but believe that even they are paying
for 130 minutes of cinematic snake oil.
Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts)
has grown distant from her shiftless goofball of a husband (Billy Crudup)
and decides to file for divorce. She falls into a relationship with
actor David Piccolo (James Franco) which is initially passionate but soon
also leaves her feeling empty. She resolves to her friend Delia (Viola
Davis) that she will embark upon a year-long quest to find herself abroad.
First stop: Italy, where she meets a fellow traveler in Swedish Sofi
(Tuva Novotny), learns the language from tutor Giovani (Luca Argentero)
and eats lots of beautifully photographed food. Then, it's off to
India to spend a few months in the Ashram of David's Hindu guru, where
she meets Richard from Texas (Richard Jenkins), a damaged gentleman with
whom she spars and bonds. Finally, her passport gets stamped in Bali,
where she'd previously been told she would return by a medicine man (Hadi
Subiyanto) while writing a travel article. There, she meets Felipe
(Javier Bardem), with whom she just might have a future. But can
Liz hang onto her spiritual growth while committing herself to a new love?
Murphy, the creator of over-the-top
TV series Popular, Nip/Tuck and Glee, seems an odd
choice for this material, but he's done everything he can to make fairly
stale stuff sing. There's a lot more humor and spontaneity than one
might expect (like, for instance, none), and a great cast is kept engaged
throughout. Knowing how much blame he deserves for a script (co-written
with Jennifer Salt) that takes us on a global tour of discovery without
showing us anything we wouldn't expect to see before we get there would
require me to have read Gilbert's book, something I come out of Eat
Pray Love with exactly no desire to do. The film often seems
to be assuring me that underwritten subplots, like an arranged marriage
in India that inspires either conflicted feelings or simply flashbacks
in Liz and an abused family in Bali for whom she does an extremely low-exertion
good deed, will be taken care of at greater length there, or perhaps they're
simply taking a curtain call for those who've already read it.
The film is divided into
four more or less equal sections, two of which I found persuasive.
In both Italy and Bali, Liz connects with good people and finds things
she enjoys, even if the movie works much too hard to make her Italian experiences
seem like parables when they're really just A Bunch of Stuff that Happened.
I liked the breezy, unpretentious charm of Nvotny and Argentero.
And Bardem is sensational as the one character in the movie I felt might
really be a living, breathing person. Felipe mixes charm, passion,
and just the right amount of dorkiness (he makes really lame mix tapes
for everyone he meets) to seem like an ideal boyfriend for Liz, or just
about anyone else. And while the part where she gets her friends
to pony up money to build a house of the Balinese family is so lame it
reminded me of the Mighty Joe Young remake (“I've got money for
Joe!”), the relationships she builds there are engaging and fun to watch.
The opening New York segment
is problematic as it unfolds and even worse when viewed in retrospect.
Stephen is a better, more entertaining character than Liz, and she drops
him for reasons that men such as myself might struggle to wrap our brains
around while women in the audience are expected to nod approvingly at her
rejection of sins such as not knowing how to hold a baby and failing to
settle on a career that would allow him to “provide” for a woman who seems
to be doing just fine on her own. David is played with a lot of charm
and conviction by Franco, albeit as a less homicidal spin on his
General
Hospital TV character, and all we learn about the decline of their
relationship was that it became systematically less fun for them to do
laundry together until Liz spent her nights lying on the floor moaning
“I don't know how to do this!” I assume there's more to it in the
book, but again, I already paid $8.50 for my ticket: how much more
am I going to have to spend to be told this story? Perhaps his greatest
sin, in retrospect, is starting her on the road to India. I've never
been a big fan of organized religion's Cult of Personality tendencies,
so while the movie grooves to the Ashram full of followers meditating to
a picture of an absent guru, I couldn't help but think the word “suckers!”
at regular intervals. Richard from Texas, played by Jenkins with
so much commitment he deserves a purple heart, is a dreadful contrivance
I refuse to believe exists in the real world, a drill sergeant of inner
peace who brands people with lame nicknames upon their first meeting (I
could tell you why he calls Liz “Groceries”, but then I'd have to kill
one or the other of us) and rides them for the rest of their days together.
And the arranged marriage subplot is all over the map, caught somewhere
between a need to be culturally sensitive and the fact that Liz doesn't
strike me as the sort to give more thought to someone else's problems than
a quick “Bummer,” before getting back to talking about herself.
Yes, folks, the Liz Gilbert
we see here, however much Roberts infuses her with her massive star power,
is a selfish, selfish woman, and I really don't have any sense of what
her journeys are to tell us other than that writing a book about an expensive
trip is a really good way to pay for it. The closing narration talks
about how truth will inevitably be revealed to those who take the time
“either externally or internally” to go looking for it, but just what truth
has she learned? Isn't the real truth that she's just now at the
beginning of her relationship with Felipe, and that she'd have called both
Stephen and David the answer at similar moments in their time together?
Find an awesome guy, marry him, but don't forget to do Hindu chats every
morning? Wow, this movie really does know the meaning of life. |
