Impossible to sympathise with main character in ‘Eat Pray Love’

Director: Ryan Murphy

Cast: Julia Roberts, Billy Crudup, James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Javier Bardem

Cert: PG

How, you wonder, can a film starring Roberts and taking in Italy, India and Bali end up so uninteresting … looking good, certainly, but this is not, surely, supposed to be a travelogue but a romantic drama?

Roberts, always good to look at, plays Liz Gilbert, a successful journalist who, without any explained reason, decides her marriage (to Crudup) is a hollow sham and she must take off to exotic places to find herself.

But Gilbert isn’t, in truth, worth finding since she’s shallow, self-regarding, cruel in the way she takes up and dumps men, is obsessed with self and does little for the feminine cause.

It’s the sort of film that thinks much of itself with absolutely no reason for such a thought, we find it difficult – if not downright impossible – to relate to the central character and her aimlessly boring quest for the inner self … it isn’t there.

It can’t even be dismissed as a chick flick since chicks are usually more interesting, more sympathetic, than Gilbert.

Star Rating: 2/5