EAT PRAY LOVE — ★★ — Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, James Franco; rated PG-13 (profanity, vulgarity, brief nudity); in general release
"Eat Pray Love" is exactly what its title suggests. It's a drama about one woman's quest to find happiness and fulfillment, both emotionally and spiritually.
Oh, and these sequences are occasionally interrupted by scenes of food preparation and consumption.
Unfortunately, the film is much less fun than that sounds. It's a talk-heavy adaptation of travel writer Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoirs.
Worse, the movie version of her story is two-plus hours in length, and most of its supposed observations sound more like touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo than honest, useful information and advice.
Julia Roberts stars as Gilbert, whose life was thrown into turmoil after a failed marriage. (Billy Crudup plays Liz's flaky former spouse.)
And after carrying on an equally unhealthy relationship with a much-younger, would-be actor, David Piccolo (James Franco), she decides to take a year off from such entanglements.
Liz also plans to travel the world during that time, and try to find herself in the process.
The first of her adventures takes her to Italy, where she learns to enjoy doing nothing — aside from sampling the pleasures of the local cuisine.
Then she heads to India, to look up David's guru. She's frustrated in her attempts to find inner peace, until she befriends Richard (Richard Jenkins), a Texan who teaches her to clear her mind.
And the last leg of Liz's journey takes her to Bali, where she studies under the tutelage of a local medicine man, Ketut (Hadi Subiyanto). She also meets Felipe (Javier Bardem), a Brazilian who may be her soulmate.
Co-screenwriter/director Ryan Murphy (TV's "Glee" and "Nip/Tuck") presents as much of Gilbert's tale as he can, in glossy, Hollywood style. But as played by Roberts, the character comes across as being self-involved and selfish, if not insensitive at times.
Compare her with the infinitely more interesting and sympathetic character played by veteran character actor Jenkins. His is a journey we'd much rather share.
"Eat Pray Love" is rated PG-13 for scattered strong profanity (including one usage of the so-called "R-rated" curse word), other sexual language and references (including slang and other crude terms), brief male nudity, brief sexual content (sexual contact and a brief sex scene, mostly implied), derogatory language and slurs (some of them sexist in nature), brief drug references (illegal drugs, including methamphetamine), brief violence (an auto-bicycle mishap) and brief bloody imagery. Running time: 133 minutes.
e-mail: jeff@desnews.com