Eat, Pray, Love is going to hit the big screens tonight. I had been dreading this moment for a few months now. I'm pretty indifferent to chick literature most of the times, but chick literature where people indulges in crazy and irresponsible antics in order to "feel whole" scare the wits out of me. They will end up breaking perfectly happy couples and sending lives down the gutter for nameless (and substanceless) yearning.
But during the press screening week, something amazing happened. The critics hate that movie with the same energy and passion than I do. From home-based amateur movie critics to feminist groups to Roger Fucking Ebert. Everybody thinks it's a retarded story. Here are the greatest hits of the most virulent critics I prepared you.
btal47 on IMDB.com wrote:
Basically, Liz has a very nice life that is already pretty exciting. She's a writer in NYC who sometimes travels for her job. Her perfectly nice husband appears to love her a lot, thinks about issues like public education, and is interested in going back to school for an MA.
It just isn't enough for Liz, though.
She ditches her husband, has an affair, and speeds off to Italy as soon as the divorce is finalized. She eats. She goes to India, where she finds her ex-boyfriend's guru and prays. She goes to Bali, where she eventually falls in love.
Everywhere she goes, to the very end, Liz needs constant validation and guidance from others. She doesn't grow as a person; she just sees a bunch of stuff and meets a bunch of people.
Legendary_Badass on IMDB.com wrote:
Liz's only conflict is from her own sociopath concepts. She's established early on as a poor playwright, highly gullible, and dare I say spoiled. These are not desirable traits. It's amazing how easily everyone accepts Liz. Italy, India, and Indonesia extend nothing but open arms and everyone who she turns to for advise is essentially the same character with the one exception being Richard from Texas (Richard Jenkins)—the sole character that doesn't seem to exist for Liz's personal amusement.
The great Lou Lumineck from New York Post wrote:
Though it’s based on a hugely popular, Oprah-endorsed memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, there’s little in the script or in Roberts’ wrongheaded Big Movie Star Performance to explain why, in the space of six months, Elizabeth dumps both her husband of a decade (Billy Crudup) and a younger actor/yogi (James Franco), both of whom adore her.
Most likely she’s bored, a sentiment that will likely be felt most acutely by guys dragged to see this overproduced, self-congratulatory collage of New Age-y clichés.
“You know what I feel when I get up in the morning?” whines Elizabeth. “Nothing.”
That’s pretty much how I felt about this movie...
James Berardinelli from Reelviews.com wrote:
Julia Roberts brings to the proceedings. Eat Pray Love's trite, platitude-laden "philosophy" embraces concepts perfect for our post-modern society: God lies within, self-forgiveness is the road to enlightenment, and it doesn't matter how many people you hurt as long as you're happy in the end.
You have to read the whole Roger Ebert critique to believe it. He swings at it like Barry Bonds on a cycle. You can find it here.
In conclusion, another gem, posted by a Rejectionist's viewer. A feminist point of view posted in the ever entertaining Bitch Magazine. I'll only post a few quotes because the article is WAY too long, but here it is if you're interested.
It’s no secret that, according to America’s marketing machine, we’re living in a “postfeminist” world where what many people mean by “empowerment” is the power to spend their own money. Twenty- and thirtysomething women seem more eager than ever to embrace their “right” to participate in crash diets and their “choice” to get breast implants, obsess about their age, and apply the Sex and the City personality metric to their friends (Are you a Miranda or a Samantha? Did you get your Brazilian and your Botox?). Such marketing, and the women who buy into it, assumes the work of feminism is largely done. Perhaps it’s because, unlike American women before them, few of the people either making or consuming these cultural products and messages have been pushed to pursue secretarial school instead of medical school, been accused of “asking for” sexual assault, or been told driving and voting were intellectually beyond them. This perspective makes it easy for the antifeminism embedded in the wellness jargon of priv-lit to gain momentum.
Priv-lit perpetuates several negative assumptions about women and their relationship to money and responsibility. The first is that women can or should be willing to spend extravagantly, leave our families, or abandon our jobs in order to fit ill-defined notions of what it is to be “whole.” Another is the infantilizing notion that we need guides—often strangers who don’t know the specifics of our financial, spiritual, or emotional histories—to tell us the best way forward. The most problematic assumption, and the one that ties it most closely to current, mainstream forms of misogyny, is that women are inherently and deeply flawed, in need of consistent improvement throughout their lives, and those who don’t invest in addressing those flaws are ultimately doomed to making themselves, if not others, miserable. (Oh snap! -B.)
Now I'm not telling you to go see The Expendables instead. I'm just inviting you not to buy into easy bullshit.
