Eat, Pray, Love Movie Review

Eat Pray Love the Movie – “An enjoyable bit of easygoing escapism, that is filled with bright colors, beautiful scenery and pleasant enough characters.” -Steven Shomler, Good Life Movie Reviews www.goodlifemoviereviews.com

Summary – Julia Roberts plays Liz Gilbert as she heads out to spend a year traveling and healing from a painful marriage/divorce. Liz spends three months in Italy (Eat), three months in India (Pray) and three months in Indonesia (Bali specifically) (Love).

Rating -I give this movie 3 out of 5 gas cans- enjoyable and worth seeing in the theater.

My Favorite quote -“Ruin is a gift.”

My Favorite Sequence – In India on the roof when Richard from Texas tells Liz his story. Incredibly poignant.

Go see this movie with – Fans of the book Eat Pray Love (see my caveat below), Julia Roberts fans, and female Javier Bardem fans (this is not your No Country for Old Men Javier Bardem). Below are pictures of both “bad” Bardem and “good” Bardem. Or is it the other way round…

My 19-year-old daughter Chelsea suggested that I both read the book Eat Pray Love and then see the movie and then review each for my blog. To see my book review go to goodlifebookreviews.com/eat pray love. I am very glad that Chelsea made this suggestion! I enjoyed both the book and the movie.

What I liked about this movie-

Julia Roberts (Liz) and Javier Bardem (Felipe) have a very appealing easy going chemistry between them – a couple who seems like they definitely belong together.

My two favorite characters in Eat Pray Love The Movie are Richard from Texas played by Richard Jenkins (Richard was also in my much loved Six Feet Under) and Felipe played by Javier Bardem. In the book my favorite character was, hands down – Richard from Texas. The fact that in the movie I like Felipe equally as much as I like Richard says a lot about Javier’s performance.

The gentlemen who plays Ketut – Hadi Subiyanto also did a great job in filling out and giving life to his character.

Lastly, I have to say that the food scenes in Italy are beautifully shot. I cannot wait to go to Italy and indulge in the culinary delights they have there!

My caveat…A Book is not a Movie and a Movie is not a Book.

When a book is made into a movie, I often hear fans of the book complain that they did not get it right, or that they told a different story than the book told.

A perfect current example is The True Blood series currently running on HBO. This series is adapted from a series of books written by Charlene Harris.

I have heard people who have enjoyed the books for a number of years now complain that the True Blood series just does not do the Sookie Stackhouse books justice. I have heard people who first watched The True Blood TV series express disappointment with the books once they picked them up.

When you read a book a large part of what you enjoy is what you imagine, you enjoy the tapestries that the author weaves in your imagination.

The only book(s) I have ever read where the movie was exactly what I had imagined was the Lord Of the Rings by Tolkien/ Jackson.

I read the Lord of The Rings trilogy and the Hobbit many times as kid. When I first saw The Fellowship of the Ring it was as if the Peter Jackson had gone inside my brain and copied exactly what I had imagined for all of the years. The fact that there are those who feel differently about this proves my point.

If you go see a movie based on a book, (Like Eat Pray Love) let the book be the book and let the movie be the movie. Enjoy each for the different medium and different experience that it is.

This post was written to the soundtrack of Eat Pray Love

Just to be clear, comic books are different, when you make a movie from a comic book you had better get it right, and Martin Campbell better not screw up Green Lantern. Doesn’t Ryan Reynolds look a little immature to play Hal Jordan..Maybe Kyle Rayner, but not Hal. And who is going to play Tomar-Re? Who is going to play the Earth C Minus Green Lambkin… Blah blah blah.