Hey readers. Yeah haven't been updating in awhile, had lots of rehearsals and shoots and assignments to do but I'm back and I've seen shit loads of movies to fill your review quota to your hearts content. And Imma start with the new Julia Roberts movie, Eat Pray Love.
Now I've heard a lot about this movie. I think Eat Pray Love is based on a book that was like the best seller in the New York Times for like 5 billion months or something. It's about Liz Gilbert, a woman who has just gone through a divorce with her husband and tries to overcome her depression by taking a solo soul searching journey through Italy, Bali and India to eat, pray and love.
I love what Julia Roberts has been doing lately, she has finally gotten to that stage of her career where people aren't recognizing her as America's sweetheart anymore and has gone on to perform in lesser known, more important films. If you haven't seen Duplicity, you should check it out because she was amazing in that and she was one heck of a force in Eat Pray Love.
Julia carries this movie. After the 15 minute mark, we hop from country to country in series of montages with Julia and the only reason why all this doesn't seem like a travel show is because we have Julia Robert's character that anchors us down with her character study. We feel the pain of her past, her hopeless attempt to resolve that pain by going on this journey but are still treated to her lighthearted charm.
And though Julia was a sight in the film, it's too bad she didn't have much good material to work with. The film is directed by Ryan Murphy who produced Glee, and he has certainly proven that he needs to stay in television because even with Julia Robert's performance and a great story already present in the book material, Eat Pray Love is generally a travel show movie you would see on Travel & Living.
For 1 hour 30 minutes, we go from place to place with Julia Roberts trying different food, wearing different clothes, touching exotic animals, trying spiritual stuff and amidst all that, Ryan Murphy failed to connect all these plot elements with the overall story of Eat Pray Love. I get why lots of the fans of the book disliked this movie because there was ultimately no soul to the film. Sure, it did have it's moments of charm but Eat Pray Love failed to find a balance between vacation shots and actual story development.
That being said, if anything else, Eat Pray Love is one of the most gorgeous non-CGI movies I have seen this year. The cinematographer is one heck of a guy. The empty travel show shots that take up 70% of the movie are absolutely gorgeous. It's full of colour & vibrant energy, that is pleasing to the eyes but like I said before, pretty pictures don't make a good movie.
You know, I think that Eat Pray Love would work much better as a TV series. Yeah. Make a miniseries of Julia Roberts doing all that she's doing in the film, but at least on television you have the luxury of time to accommodate all the beautiful sweeping shots of her travels and still maintain the integrity of the story peppered through the episodes.
Ultimately, Eat Pray Love is just an average movie when it could have been a true Oscar contender. If wnything, the film is only going to make an appearance in the cinematography category.RATING: 4.5/10
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