Eat Pray Love (2010)

When given the choice I tend to see the movie before reading the book. This time I had already read and loved Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of psychic healing through world travel. The movie is fine, but it's tough to live up to a good read. The cast, locations, cinematography, costumes, set design, and music are first rate. Ann, who says she goes to two movies a year, was suddenly available last Saturday. She had listened to the audiobook and enjoyed it, but found the movie disappointing. Nichole and some of her facebook friends had weighed in between August 11-13: 9 loved the book, 5 liked it some, 10 hated it; 12 couldn't wait to see the movie, 6 had reservations based on casting or their feelings about the book, and 3 wouldn't dream of seeing it. Jack was busy that day, and, though I'm sure he would've been a good sport, probably is okay about missing it (he did read the book, on my enthusiastic recommendation. He didn't hate it).

If you are among the millions who have read the book and seen the movie, you may be interested in this good analysis from NPR of what went wrong in the conversion from page to screen. Not that it is lacking for talent. Ryan Murphy (director/co-writer/co-producer of Nip/Tuck (FX-TV 2003-10), Glee (ABC-TV), and the wonderful movie Running with Scissors (2006)) performed the same duties here. He and Jennifer Salt (she played Eunice Tate on the TV series Soap (1977-81) and co-wrote 19 episodes of Nip/Tuck) co-wrote the script, using some of Gilbert's humor along the way (anything that makes you laugh, such as Richard from Texas' nickname for Gilbert, is straight from the book). Julia Roberts (I named my favorites in Duplicity) does the best she can as Liz with the tools she's been given. Billy Crudup (see my post on Public Enemies) thoroughly convinced me that Liz was right to divorce his character. Viola Davis (Doubt, a cameo in State of Play, and delightful as an eccentric artist in United States of Tara) gives her character of Liz's agent and friend Delia warmth and professionalism, but, why, as the NPR blog above asks, did the movie leave out the advance payment for the book that financed the journey? James Franco (see Milk, plus he had a funny small part in Date Night, and I'm eagerly anticipating his Allen Ginsberg in Howl--I saw the trailer online the other night). Richard Jenkins (Burn After Reading and especially The Visitor) brings his considerable talents to Richard from Texas. Comedian Lewis Black did a hilarious segment on The Daily Show complaining about the casting of Javier Bardem as the love interest, "the creepy villain from No Country for Old Men," for which Bardem won an Oscar in 2008. I guess Black didn't see Bardem in his other award-winning work as nice guys: Before Night Falls (2000--Oscar nominated), The Dancer Upstairs (2002), The Sea Inside (2004), and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I also liked Mike O'Malley (Leatherheads (2008), a regular on Glee and the now-cancelled My Name is Earl, more) as Delia's husband, Hadi Subiyanto in his first role as Ketut Liyer (the real Ketut, a very old man in India, is apparently ailing now), and Gilbert's gal-pals in the three foreign countries, Tuva Novotny (voted Sweden's most beautiful woman in several magazine polls in 1998 and 2000) in Italy, Russhita Singh in India, and Christine Hakim in Bali.

As my fellow blogger at reelsoundtrack put it, the songs included in the movie are a far better mix than we would have expected. He has posted them all, including 7 videos for your listening pleasure, and imdb has come through again with a complete list, including composers. The rest of the music is composed by the prolific Dario Marianelli (after The Soloist, I wrote about him in Everybody's Fine). It's worth mentioning that Samba Da Bencao by Bebel Gilberto, featured during the Bali sequence of the film and linked in the reelsoundtrack post, also appeared in Closer, which also starred Julia Roberts and had great songs.

The critics have not been kind to Eat Pray Love. Its imdb rating is 4.7 out of 10 and its Rottentomatoes score is a scathing 38%. Yet it was #2 at the box office last week and #3 this week (the numbers in this link will vary, depending on when you click through). I've heard that Gilbert's follow-up memoir, Committed, is even better. We'll see if that one makes it to the silver screen as well. This is going into my list of food movies.