the eat pray love disaster: PART THE SECOND

Against my better judgment -- that's a lie. BECAUSE I AM A MASOCHIST AND ALSO BECAUSE I LOVE SCENERY PORN, I watched Eat Pray Love, the movie! The two hour, fourteen minute movie! Despite the fact that I kind of hated the book. Or, to be more exact, while being moderately enjoyable during the process of consumption, it left me the sour taste of entitlement and self-loathing in my mouth. The movie kind of does that too, but to a lesser extent, partly because a lot of the boring, navel-gazing bits are cut out, to be replaced by Julia Roberts' immobile and/or crying face and shots of the scenery and the food. The scenery and the food are very good, by the way! But I think even Emma Thompson or Kate Winslet would have a tough time making the central character of this movie likable, and Julia Roberts is not, shall we say, in the same league. A lot of the revisions to the story the movie makes are equally as witless as events in the book, but they are witless in a standardized Hollywood sort of way, so I can comfort myself that at least it wouldn't happen that way in real life. There's also the whole privileged-white-lady-in-a-formerly-colonized-country business, which I am totally unequipped to deal with at 1:08 AM on a Monday morning, but suffice to say that in general total obliviousness to the issues one is raising is not the best route for a scriptwriter (or author, AHEM) to go!

But enough bitching! Here are screenshots of parts of the movie I did like.

Italy!

India, including a beautiful wedding scene that was probably also wildly problematic!

Bali! I unexpectedly found the end of a book to be a letdown, even given the promise of romance and a happy ending, and, despite the addition of Javier Bardem, the end of the movie was as well. Oh well. At least the damn thing is over and I will be curious no more.