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I didn’t expect to like Elizabeth Gilbert’s now ubiquitous, best-selling travel tome, Eat Pray Love. The synopsis reads like countless other silly, feel-good, self help books. When my girlfriend suggested I read it, I wanted to babble something about motor oil and the Miami Dolphins. Real men don’t read such nonsense!
But it surprisingly resonated with me. Gilbert’s prose is accessible and real without being overly preachy and … well … too “self-helpy”. (Yes, that’s a word. Google it.) It’s impossible not to like her.
The movie? Not so much. It’s good in the way that a hollow action flick leaves you feeling entertained, but not entirely fulfilled. It’s a decent cheeseburger when you really wanted a dry-aged steak.
I’ll admit that it’s well acted by all, particularly Gilbert’s charming love interest, Javier Bardem, who displays a fantastic range of acting ability (when you consider his start as a bloodthirsty, sociopathic killer in No Country for Old Men). The problem isn’t the cast; it’s a script that tries to cover the book’s dense one year timeline of Gilbert’s personal development, struggle and growth … in just two hours. We see Roberts (Gilbert) get married, divorced, fall in love with a younger man, break up with him, travel to Italy, then India, then Indonesia, then fall in love again. All in two hours.
I kept trying to forget the book while watching it. On its own, I think the movie holds up fine as a popcorn chick flick. But it’s clear that so much of the book’s substance – its soul – was edited out for time constraints.
Bottom line: some (dare I say most) books worth reading just can’t make the move from print to screen. The latter media isn’t capable of handling the demands of the former. I’ll call it a decent rental, but save the $12 box office admission.