I don't think this is a very good flick. A murky mish-mash of delusion, I think! But delusion without truth. Now here is a picture devoid of personality or beauty!
Here we tip our cap to the great master, Ebert: "“Eat Pray Love” is shameless wish-fulfillment, a Harlequin novel crossed with a mystic travelogue, and it mercifully reverses the life chronology of many people, which is Love Pray Eat."
Yes, I think that is right. So if you are a 40 year old woman [white, likely], go watch this movie.
I am deeply interested in what our preferences say about us while simultaneously accepting I will never get the answers I wish. What is it about this fantasy that makes women tick. I think it not dissimilar to man's favorite fantasy. Travel to exotic locale, find love, find oneself. The grass is greener! Though I think there is a variation to the man's fantasy. Travel to exotic locale, train under an unlikely master before successfully leading a native peasant rebellion against the evil empire, find love, find oneself.
I am reminded of this clip I saw on social media. It was a selfie video of a girl crying in Paris because she felt very isolated because it was hard to make friends. But you know, good for her for trying. What percentage of the women that loved Eat, Pray, Love went and did the thing? Or was their love for the thing a tacit acceptance that they never would, or was it a tacit understanding that it could never be as good as it was portrayed. Either way, I figure it was tacit.
I'm going to bring in this Hemingway quote again. "Going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There's nothing to that."
But I don't think that means you shouldn't try it. You've got to slay those rotten little ideas. You've got to drop LSD in a Barcelona night club and not get laid by the hottest woman alive to get a bit of a reality check.
Look, let me get a bit carnal. Does anyone else have trouble imagining banging the shit out of Julia Roberts? Look at it this way. You think that a strong, handsome, soft-spoken, well-spoken, Spaniard is going to caress you into an orgasmic dreamland of love true love but really you're going to get finger banged on a cot by a divorced alcoholic, you know what I mean?