Eat. Pray. Love.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

After reading the book and really enjoying it a couple of years ago, I saw the movie this weekend.  Not completly by choice, though.  I'd heard some pretty bad reviews coming into it, but my friends suggested dinner an a movie (kind of a book club meeting type event), and it seemed like too much fun to pass up.  A nice girls night will win out every time, even if it means having to put up with Julia Roberts in a looooong movie about a spoiled rich woman trying to find herself.

So, since I'm not a particularly gifted writer who can organize my thoughts into coherent essays with beginning middle and end, I will instead bullet point my observations:

- Javier Bardem is not what I imagined for Felipe.  For some reason, I though he would look older, less amazingly handsome.  More akin to Ben Bernanke.  And for the record, the chairman of the Federal Reserve is not the first person that came to mind.  I just had this image in my head of someone with a trimmed white beard, bald head and medium build.  And after googling some images, I felt Bernanke most closely approached that vision. Now I can't remember if this is based on the book's description, or just something that popped into my head.   Nevertheless, Bardem was an excellent choice for Felipe.  He looked disheveled enough that the change in look didn't bother me, and he seemed to fit within the age range.  And he's such a handsome and wonderful actor.  I have loved him since I first saw him in Live Flesh many years ago, kicking ass in wheelchair basketball.  And its been great seeing him achieve recognition within the American market, mostly because it just pays so much better.  I have a soft spot for the Spanish actors, what can I say.

- Was I the only one annoyed with all the talk of letting go of your waistline and muffin top, and food is awesome! etc, being told by two anorexic size zero Hollywood actresses?  Its not that I doubt genetically thin people love food too, but the scene where they are trying on "bigger" jeans was ridiculous.  Were they size 1 jeans instead of size 0?  As a fleshy woman, let me tell you movie, blegh, screw you! I'll show you what a muffin top really looks like after having a love affair with food for four months.

- The India chapter was boring in the book and boring in the movie.  I could do without it.  Maybe its my distinct lack of spirituality, but the stakes didn't seem particularly hight in this chapter.  I didn't care for her quest.

- I found it extremely annoying that her search is towards one of self-discovery, and inner peace, yet the conclusion seems to sabotage this..  She specifically states that her problem is that she's always been in relationship mode, jumping from relationship to relationship and never stopping to survey her surroundings and her own wishes.  Yet, the ultimate conclusion is that in order to let go of her pain she needs to be able to love again?  Isn't that the very thing she's trying to avoid, that she falls in love too fast?

- And on that subject, how is she able to establish these close relationships so fast?  I remember that in the book they felt more organic, more like fast friendships borne out of a need to connect with others.  After all, the author is all alone in a new place, so it makes sense to establish intense relationships with people.  But in the movie, her friendships feel like plot devices, drawn to her with the sole purpose of dispensing life lessons and forcing her to question her preconceptions, not fleshed out people with wants and desires of their own.  Are they getting anything out of these friendships?  If they are, its not clear what that is.  Except Felipe, of course, but he's hopelessly infatuated with her.  Mostly , it seems that they give and she receives, and it must be exchausting to be in such a one-way relationship.  Maybe if she's stayed anywhere longer than 4 months all these people would have realized what a self-centered insufferable shrew she really is.