Genres

Visitors Review

lauraleesmith0 2012-05-21 05:59:50

Good but not Excellent

Many of the Reviews here are written by men who can't stand the factthat a female lead character actually chose to seek her own lifedesires rather than conform to what her upbringing had taught her towant. They are exactly what this movie is talking about.The role is perfectly cast with Julia Roberts... a woman who's onlydesire in life was to get married to a handsome Rich man and have kids,but when she has her marriage she's in agony. This is not what sheREALLY wanted. So she decides to go after what she wants rather thanwhat people have told her to want. On her journey she meets many womenwho attack her the same way for not having a husband and catering tohim. In one scene an Italian matriarch attacks her and she is told "Ifshe were a man you wouldn't be attacking her this way." To which theMatriarch replies "But she's not a man. She's a woman." And that rightthere sums up the message of the movie. How hard it can be for women tofind what they want out of life when all their lives they are TOLD whatthey SHOULD want and not allowed to seek their own desires.The problem however is that this character is also supposedly asuccessful writer. Now- I never bought her as an introvert writer and Ithink this mostly has to do with the script which was better than mostHollywood scripts, but left much to be desired when it glossed overmany things. Also the character comes from NYC.. which is a place thatmost women feel free to compete with the big boys. Now I know thatplace doesn't mean a woman isn't pressured into becoming a housewife.Being Latina growing up in NYC I myself was denied college by myparents because they felt my goal in life was to serve a husband, so Ihad to pay my way through school while they paid for and supported mylittle brother.. So yes, I know it's possible to live in NYC and stillhave to deal with 17th century bias, but the script didn't do much toexplain how it is that this white woman living in NYC got to be in thisposition. Sure she passingly says that she never had a chance to reallyfind what SHE wanted, but more background into that would've made iteasier to relate to the character. Another flaw is that you never feellike you're IN the movie. You often feel more just like an observer. Istill would recommend this movie, but just know that it could've beenbetter.

Claudia Puig 2012-05-20 20:55:48

Though there are a handful of funny lines, the deeper observations are facile. The whole journey feels like a rich girl gone slumming.

Tasha Robinson 2012-05-15 10:22:56

It's all external trappings trying to express internal developments, and the movie's hand-holding stridency just emphasizes the artificiality of its fantasy.

2012-05-15 02:18:02

AWESOME MOVIE

This review is from: Eat Pray Love (DVD) MOVIE WAS AWESOME AND HAD A LOT OF MEANING. HAD ALREADY SEEN IT AND IT WAS A MUST HAVE. THE SECOND DVD WAS FOR A FRIEND OF MINE.

Anubhav Jain 2012-05-11 22:52:42

Stupid Movie

Story line is either very slow or very fast.Julia Roberts picked a wrong role.Director stressed more on problems in India rather than something goodabout it.Why director showed beggars, village, mosquitoes, child marriage andThums up (DIALOGUE: In India, Don't touch anything except yourself).In the movie, Julia Robert seems to be confused, who to pickEx-Boyfriend or Ex-Husband.Get the real story.......Movie is a disaster.....

2012-05-11 13:58:54

Unlikable character who is totally selfish. Very slow.

Julia Roberts character starts the movie married. He is totally devoted to her but she looks at him with total contempt from the beginning. The first part of the movie is about her mid-life crises. She feels trapped and wants to selfishly abandon her husband to travel the world. Despite everyone around her telling her she is acting like a teenager or early twenty year old, she divorces her husband. In the divorce proceedings he even turns down all her money and says he just wants her; he also laments she never told him she was unhappy, just left (she instantly starts sleeping with a much younger man-I mean instantly). She then leaves to go and do what the movie should be called, "Eat, sleep with Younger Guys and Be Selfish" How many women would love this movie if the main character was a man? What if the man instantly left his wife and started sleeping around? He would be a "pig" and they would hate the move. Falling in love is easy, staying in love is hard; it takes work. With "Hollywood" role models guiding so much of our life, I wonder why our divorce rate is 50%?

phaenomenalbert 2012-05-10 16:12:23

A very long time ago, Pretty Woman was on my list of all time favorites

...and I still do like that movie. so you could say I'm easily pleased.Eat Pray Love has wonderful national geographic style scenery andlandscape shots. That's where most of the budget of $ 60 000 000 musthave gone to. for everything else, I would ask my money back.My wife was fast asleep 15 min into the movie. I decided to sit throughit, so it wouldn't be unfair to complain about time wasted. but leavingit all behind and starting a new life some place else (the story!) isway more exciting and complex. From my own experience and under lesswealthy circumstances that is.It's not that I hated the movie, because that would require emotionalinvestment. the whole story was simply too shallow to induce any suchstrong reaction.

Nigel Andrews 2012-05-09 22:05:04

Roberts' gorgeousness is served up sacrificially to 140 minutes of psychobabbling "insights", many of them trite or questionable, all of them wearisome.

2012-05-02 20:55:35

Eat Love Pray

Quick reunion with a well-loved movie; Amazon could almost be Match.com! Brings faraway places right into your living room and heart.

pik923 2012-05-02 09:49:44

Awful - what a waste of money, energy, money, energy

won't even say it is a waste of talent because there is apparently notalent in this film. The actors, a big line up were obviously paid alot to do this - Julia Roberts uses her name to land a lot of money inher bank account and let's face it she can't act. And this film reallygives it all away. Finally exposed for the fraud she is.Give me a break. What a terrible sexist, anti-feminist story this filmis. Give me a break. With all these actors lined up there are very fewif any moments in the film worth waiting up for.I look for some sort of redeeming feature in a film - the score, thescript, the scenery, actors, plot, locations, props, score - opps Isaid that. To use Tango music in Rome is the summation of howeverything in a film can be wrong....and I won't get into the editing,it is as poor as the script and storyline.Don't waste 2 hours of your life on this film unless of course you wanta lesson on how not to make a film.

2012-05-01 09:09:36

Eat, Pray, Love - Julia Roberts Nails it Again!

This review is from: Eat Pray Love (DVD) I loved this movie in the theater; I couldn't wait for this to come to DVD and I can't stop watching it!

Matthew Sorrento 2012-05-01 02:56:49

Rodney [Dangerfield] may have cracked about "praying after you eat," but this film reflects the need to surfeit before finding balance.

MosH 2012-04-26 21:30:53

Fun, sadness and suckage. To avoid for casual moviegoers

In the movie, the characters play a game: associate a word with a city.The movie takes place in 4 acts in 4 different cities: New York, Rome,Kolkata, Bali. Playing a similar game, here are the words I associatewith the movie in the film: blah for New York, fun for Rome, depressingfor Kolkata and stupid for Bali.The chick-flick feel New York jumps rushes through lots of things thathardly make sense, then ultimately moving to the central motivator ofthe movie that Liz isn't happy. It's actually quite a poignant reminderof our daily grind and how we wish we could just run away from it all.Liz does run away and decides to spend one year traveling; eating inItaly, praying in India and well, in Bali.The Italy act is fun and entertaining; the Eddie Veder resonating Indiais depressing but still moving. However, Bali is utterly stupid. As youmight have guessed from the title of the movie, she's supposed to findlove in Bali but she just stumbles through one event after anotherwithout a cohesive sense of motivation or direction. All I could thinkof during that final act was the three protruding veins on JuliaRoberts' forehead and Javier Bardem's bug eyes every time he took offhis sunglasses. I just couldn't get into what was happening to Liz atall.At times, Liz appears narcissistic, just caring only about herself andlater on in the movie, air-headed as she stumbles through events oneafter another. On the other hand, it also delves deep into ideas ofself-discovery, contentment and disappointment that gets you thinkingabout yourself. However, as a movie it's a real disappointment. Themovie would have been recommendable had it ended after India and notextended all the way to Bali. But, as a whole, the movie feels hollowand over-bearing.

Danusha Goska 2012-04-26 07:01:13

Pretentious, Glossy Travel Ad; Bardem Esp Bad

"Eat Pray Love" is a botch. There are some very pretty images on screenof beautiful people lounging and engaging in shallow, narcissistic,pseudo-spiritual preening and posing, some nice, crunchy, flowing,draping, tie-dyed, robes and scarves, and some heaping plates of pastagorged down by people with perfect teeth. It's like looking at aspiritually pretentious, multi-culti American Express commercial fortwo and a half hours. The travelogue scenes are undermined, though, byinappropriate camera work. Directory Ryan Murphy uses a shaky,hand-held camera, spinning scenes, and extreme close-ups. Hiscinema-verite style is very out of place with this material.Other than Richard Jenkins' performance, "Eat Pray Love" has not onesecond of integrity. It wants to be about the nature of love, themystery of life, and the search for the transcendent. The main starsand Ryan Murphy, the writer–director, show no evidence of any depth orinsight on any of these questions. I pity the fool who takes this filmon as a spiritual guide or love guru.I'm not sure if viewers were supposed to have as much contempt for thecharacters as I ended up having. Was I supposed to regard Elizabeth(Julia Roberts) as a passive, parasitic, narcissist, coward, and trampwho slept with anyone who was almost as good looking as she? She'scoupled with three men in the movie, and flirts seriously with twomore, and they are all pretty enough for a travel layout in VanityFair. None has any discernible personality. The only reason Elizabethhas for hooking up with these guys is that he and she are the two bestlooking characters on screen at any given moment.Even though Elizabeth embarks on a life-changing world tour, and doesone charitable deed, she comes across as passive. Others in the filmhave lives; Elizabeth stands on the sideline, watching. She livesthrough others. This is especially evident when her Indian friend,Tulsi, is forced into an arranged marriage at age 17.I've met Hindu women in their forties and fifties who could still cryreal tears over that moment when they came home and found the red sariand were forced to start producing children for a strange man theydidn't know and didn't much like. This film treats forced, childmarriage as just another chance for stunning wardrobe changes and shotssuitable for a National Geographic spread.The multi-culti "It's a Small World" approach is morally grotesque,especially in a film that wants to be about searching for the bigtruths. In terms of the structure of the film itself, showing JuliaRoberts, no doubt the tallest person there, hanging out at an Indianwedding just makes the character into a dilettante, someone the viewerfinds hard to like.In addition to being shallow, the script is at times incoherent. I hadno idea what was going on in the first twenty minutes of the film. Ididn't know – and I still don't – what Elizabeth does for a living, howshe lost all her money, as the film tells us she does, or how she gotthe money back. She appears to give all her money to her layabout (butpretty) husband; why? Couldn't she get a better divorce lawyer? Thenshe's off to Italy to eat pasta and tease a sexually frustratedlanguage tutor and annoy traditional Italian matrons who don'tunderstand her lifestyle choice; where'd this woman who just losteverything get the cash to do that? Viola Davis is compelling, but Ihave no idea who her character was or what she was doing in the film,except as a racial token, which is sad. I kept thinking how much betterof a film this would have been had someone with Davis' depth been amain character.James Franco pops up as one of Elizabeth's lovers, but his entire,tedious and uninteresting segment could have been deleted, and nothingwould have been lost.Elizabeth has a Balinese guru named Ketut. No idea whether we aresupposed to take Ketut seriously or not. He is a fortune teller whorepeats the same tired spiel to each new client: "You are a worldtraveler." Mind, he's reading the palms of world travelers. He smileswithout letup, which gets creepy.Had I not seen this film, I never would have known how bad an actorJavier Bardem can be when he has contempt for his project. As one ofElizabeth's boytoys, Bardem gives one of the single worst screenperformances I've ever seen. He slums through the film with a phony,creepy smile on his face, the kind of smile that hides something. I washoping that he might be a slasher; now that would have perked the filmup.There are a couple of utterly phony scenes, one with an Aussie lad wecould never believe is Bardem's son, one where Bardem invites Robertsto an island getaway, that are overcooked to scorching point – you canpractically smell the phony emoting – and that cheapen the film beyondredemption. What was going on with the director? Did he not see whatBardem was doing? Richard Jenkins, as a soul-wrecked Texan seeking enlightenment, or atleast the ability to sleep at night, is the one integral, worthyfeature of the film. His character is real, and believable, sowell-written I have to guess someone other than the main writer createdhim, and perfectly well acted.See a really brilliant film about a beautiful woman on an internationalquest for spiritual transcendence: "The Nun's Story," starring AudreyHepburn and Peter Finch.

ericamiller23 2012-04-23 23:47:04

If you don't relate this move wont be for you

I came onto this site to read the reviews as I found this moviewonderful, and to my surprise I seen more negative's than positive's.There were so many people who said Liz was "Selfish". I disagree. I am not her age, I am 28 but I find myself in the same spot as her andmaybe I can help some people see what I seen in this movie. I noticedoff the bat, it seemed Liz was not happy in her marriage, I got thisfrom him not wanting to take part in things in her life and she wasn'treally interested in his. Seems they were on different paths and itshard to be in a marriage when your mentally on opposite ends of theworld. Yeah she broke his heart, but her heart was broken too. Shewished they had more of a connection but unfortunately they didn't. She then finds comfort in a younger male (franco) more of a reboundrelationship where they as well are not on the same page. Fighting allthe time, not being intimate, totally on different paths as well inlife.. wow sounds like my miserable relationship I am in now. Shedecides to take time for herself to get to know herself and what sheneeds in life, how this is selfish to others is beyond me?? I cried the whole way through this movie, why? because I saw me and Isaw my relationship, and it hurts and no one knows how it feels unlessyour in it. Sometimes no matter how hard you try in a relationship itsnever going to work and your never going make your partner be the wayyou want them to be and its best to move on and that's what Liz wastrying to say and do. In the end I believe she just had to meet the right person and she did.Not some man who wanted different things than her (her husband) and notsome younger male who hasn't grown up yet (franco). She met someone whois perfect for her. No one will be able to truly relate to this movieunless you have been in her shoes and I have.

Christy Lemire 2012-04-23 19:58:25

It provides a gorgeous escape, exquisitely photographed and full of female wish fulfillment. Yet it also offers sufficient emotional heft and self-discovery to make you feel as if you've actually learned something.

2012-04-21 03:16:34

How About Some Cheese With That Whine!

On one particular weekend night, when there were not many new movie releases, my wife and I went to see Eat Pray Love. I left the theater with anxiety instead of leaving relaxed. In my estimation, the lead female, portrayed by Julia Roberts, knew how to do only one thing really well: WHINE. Perhaps I didn't "get it" because I am a man, but to my way of thinking, this movie was a complete waste of film; it's akin to sticking a pin in your eye.

Frank Swietek 2012-04-21 00:34:01

Eat. Pray. Love. Barf....A celebration of self-indulgence trying to pass itself off as profound soul-searching.

2012-04-16 22:32:51

Surprisingly Good!

My wife wanted to get this one "Eat, Pray, Love". I thought it was going to be another mushy chick flick, which it kind of was but it was a really good story, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie!!

kerirenee 2012-04-16 18:05:59

If you didn't like this movie you are probably MALE or have never made mistakes.

This is one of the best movies I have seen. But I am female. I doubtmany men can appreciate this movie. Yes, the movie IS all about Liz(Julia), because it's supposed to be! It's all about HER struggle andthe mistakes she makes along the way! She does not have a disorder assome have mentioned...she is simply a woman finding her peace in lifeand makes some poor decisions while doing so. We've ALL done so...andthis is such a beautifully moving film that I cannot see how you cannotlove it unless you are unable to let go and feel. I don't even normallyappreciate Julia Roberts, but in this film she is incredible. Sheallows her vulnerability to show through...and this is a great sign ofstrength, not weakness. Any woman who has struggled at times in herlife with following her own true inner voice despite what everyone elsewants will appreciate this movie.