Eat Pray Love

Between New York, Rome, New Delhi and Bali, a plot's got to turn up somewhere along the way. Check the luggage, suggests Kimberly Gadette. Seriously, how do you leave home without it?

Long before the days of personal photos on the computer, do you remember that one particularly dull co-worker named Gerald who'd come back from vacation with piles of pictures in chewed yellow envelopes? He'd force them upon you while he droned on in excruciating detail about food he'd consumed, strangers he'd met – stories devoid of even a shred of human interest. But you had to humor him because, frankly, what with all the personal time you'd already taken from that hellhole of a job, you couldn't afford to flee.

Eat Pray Love is a lot like Gerald. But now ... you can tell Gerald to go jump in the lake. (Since he's already vacationed there, he knows exactly where to go.)

The film offends from the very start. In an opening voiceover lifted directly from Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Julia Roberts' Liz recounts how her psychologist girlfriend was called on to counsel Cambodian refugees who'd lived through hell: rape, torture, gruesome murders of relatives that had occurred before their eyes. Yet these women only wanted to talk about their romantic life – whether this or that fellow at the camp loved this or that girl, even though he had married another, etc. Liz sums up the anecdote by saying: "This is what we are like."

Sex and the City 2 may have been an affront to women, but given that it was a comedy, we could distance ourselves by laughing at, rather than with it. But since Eat Pray Love is a drama, when we're immediately told that the protagonist thinks that a woman is incapable of looking any deeper into the heart of man other than intuiting whether he might ask her out on a date ... all we can do is gasp.

It certainly doesn't help that this memoir-turned-feature is a tepid recounting of an entitled American woman's planned spiritual journey. Authentic as silicone, the agreement with the publisher stated that Gilbert would receive a $200,000 advance in order to find herself ("now where did I last put me?"). This fact lends far more of a stink to this project than the teeming homeless subsisting just down the alleyway from Liz's lovely Roman pied-à-terre.

But like a writer who's blown her year-long advance on gelati and pasta in the first four months ... I'm getting ahead of myself.

After both her marriage to Billy Crudup's Stephen and her ensuing affair with James Franco's struggling actor David dissolves, Liz runs off for a year to travel. She'll stop off in Italy to pursue pleasure ("Eat"), before traveling to India to pursue devotion ("Pray"), ultimately ending up in Bali to pursue balance ("Love"). In the first act, she mopes about Rome, wistfully sighing at sexy negligees and gowns displayed on store mannequins, wondering when the next Mr. Wonderful will appear. Then it's off to the ashram, washing a floor for two minutes before meeting a recovering alcoholic named Richard (Richard Jenkins). We edge close to AA territory as the combative Richard tells her to "do the work!" He also exhorts her to forgive herself. For what? Boring us to death?

At some point during the first leg of this fatuous travel-slog, we realize with a dawning horror that there is no plot. No conflict. However, in the third act, when Liz' bike collides with a jeep driven by a handsome Brazilian (Javier Bardem's Felipe), we are suddenly jolted awake. Wow. Is something going to happen? Is she hurt? Perhaps she'll experience some physical hardship that she'll have to overcome? Nope, false alarm. Whew, that was close.

Oddly out of step with the 21st century, the film depicts the fact that Liz, by traveling alone, shocks the women she encounters. An unmarried woman, traveling without a male escort? Amazing, this cutting-edge social drama ... if, say, this film were taking place in 1959. But as for today? Are they kidding?

Given his hit musical comedy/drama television series Glee, as well as the nasty Nip/Tuck, director/co-writer Ryan Murphy should have been able to add more flair to the proceedings. Yet aside from an ebullient Bardem, whose character has more back story in his fifteen minutes than the two plus hours monopolized by Roberts' Liz, we're given flat sketches of those characters who are supposed to matter. Crudup makes the most of his few flashbacks, but we don't get much of a sense of who he is. Ditto the wonderful Viola Davis. As for Franco, the scenes with him and Roberts are so minor, it's surprising to learn that their relationship had lasted more than a few weeks.

It is unfortunate that Roberts is stuck playing this self-involved, self-pitying woman. Rather than winning us over, this protagonist merely annoys. The fact that this character lives for a better part of the year among people who experience true hardship – yet all she expresses is a myopic, personal discontent – makes her highly unsympathetic. One wonders what growth the character may have had with a different director who wasn't as attached to the book. Per Roberts, "Ryan and Jennifer [Salt] did a very reverential adaptation."

As for Roberts herself, it seems that whenever she's uncomfortable, out comes the trademark laugh/bark. It's an obvious actor's tic, taking us out of the story. That said, since there actually isn't a story, maybe Roberts should have thrown away the script and treated us to a 133-minute laugh fest. At least we would have smiled. Every now and then.

Rating on a scale of 5 copies of the unavoidable sequel, "Eat Pray Loathe": 1

Release date: US= 13 August 2010; UK= 24 September 2010
Directed by: Ryan Murphy
Screenplay by: Ryan Murphy & Jennifer Salt
Based on the book by: Elizabeth Gilbert
Cast: Julia Roberts, James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis, Billy Crudup, Javier Bardem
Rating: US = PG-13; UK = PG
Running time: 133 minutes