Eat Pray Love

I have not read the novel 'Eat, Pray, Love' which became a best seller after being recommended by Oprah Winfrey. I assume the movie version, which for some reason loses the commas in it's title, bears some similarity to the novel in which case I won't be rushing out to purchase the book.

In 'Eat Pray Love', Julia Roberts divorced from her husband and restless despite a new relationship takes a year off to travel and discover (rediscover?) herself. Roberts eats in Italy, prays in India and falls in love in Indonesia. And that folks is about it. In two and a quarter hours, nothing else of great note occurs. There is little in the way of conflict or drama or humour or suspense or...anything.

The section set in Italy is pretty enough to watch. Most of the Indian section takes place in an Ashram and thus loses a great opportunity to convey the noise, colour and dust of that nation and the section in Bali Indonesia presents what seems to me to be a fairly sanitised view of that location.

The character portrayed by Roberts is not especially interesting and the movie provides little reason to feel sympathy for her.

I can't say that I disliked this movie but I was expecting something a bit weightier and more substantial than a B-grade, bland travelogue.