Location, location, location is everything in real estate decisions but also includes huge, highly anticipated summer films that straddle the cusp of fall. You gotta have a gimmick, and a sumptuous Bali location certainly qualifies. You can almost smell sequel to Eat Pray Love in the mounds of spaghetti sauce served on the silver screen. I found the calendar location of Eat Pray Love also interesting in that it’s not a spring fling AKA Oscar-hopeful killer; not an early but ugly summer offering, instead a stylish butter-laden film floating like ghee into theaters as a summer smorgasbord of shameless play-on-heartstrings. What did you expect?
Elizabeth Gilbert, whose book is the basis for the screenplay, did not see Julia Roberts coming to fill the sandals of Liz, and ride the bike in Bali. But there she is along with Viola Davis (Delia Shiraz), Richard Jenkins (Richard from Texas—I think he portrays himself), Billy Crudup (Steven Gilbert), James Franco (David Picollo), Javier Bardem (Felipe the Brazilian), and Balinese medicine man Nyomo (I. Gusti Ayu Puspawati) toothless yet brilliant.
This drama opens with writer Liz Gilbert in Bali, where she bids adieu to her spiritual mentor Nyomo. I can’t call him her guru because he purposely leaves her in the dark and gifts her with a cryptic graphic that she keeps. She returns to New York City, her husband Steven, and her best friend Delia (the talented Davis). Delia listens while Gilbert talks out loud about the need “to marvel at something.” Gilbert lacks credibility, and who wouldn’t. How can you sell annual “marvel” which can happen only while learning Italian in Italy, visiting an ashram in India, and rounding it off with a repeat trip to Bali? Delia is not buying it but sits and listens.
How does one prepare for such armchair adventure on a really hot Texas afternoon? Women filled every seat in the first matinee, which bodes well for the feminine fixation with Eat Pray Love. I wore my Bali best and took notes. My take: Eat Italy, Pray India, and Love Bali make up the bones of this film. And a pleasing score including Mozart in the mix supplement the missing link —connection of Liz with the men of this film and the audience.
New York, Rome, Naples, India, and Bali (first film shot there) locales are not the only good things about Eat Pray Love; they are actually the best things about it. However, a solid cast buoys an out-of-her element Julia Roberts. Honestly, she needs a lot of help in the connect-to-the-audience department. I expected that, but it was not a given if you’ve marveled over her Anna of Notting Hill. As expected, she smiles too often and must stifle the big laugh — it happens anyway.
.jpg?t=20130517094513)
Article comments