Eat Pray Love

For many of us,Manhattan’s tree-lined side streets offer a romantic ideal of urban life, butfor the protagonist of Eat Pray Love,familiarity breeds banality. The change of scene demanded by Liz (JuliaRoberts) is triggered by the realization that she had married the wrong man, awell-meaning ne’er-do-well (Billy Crudup), yet she seems to have been restlessall her life. Based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir, Eat Pray Love wants to be a journey ofdiscovery, even a story of self-affirmation by a woman in a world where menstill seem to be having most of the fun. And those themes are sounded likeminor-key grace notes in a symphony of sunshine. As a film, Eat Pray Love is a nicely constructedtwo hours of escape from the humdrum to places where mostly beautiful, alwayssophisticated people congregate in settings to die for.

Some fans of Gilbert’smemoir have already weighed in that the book was better, but the book doesn’thave Julia Roberts, her shy smile as radiant as the sunrise and her charismaadding a honied glow to every mouthwatering scene in the outdoor cafes of Rome, where Vespasclatter by on the cobblestone roads, just as in every traveler’s fantasy.

Rome becomes Liz’s placeto trade the life-denying Anglo-Saxon work ethic for the Italian sweetness ofdoing nothingif nothing is defined as ordering wonderful food in a languagewhose sounds are music and gestures are the sweep of the conductor’s baton. Onthen to noisy, crowded Indiato get spiritual. Liz finds a zone of peace in an ashram where she bends to thediscipline of scrubbing the hard marble floors and sitting still for hours ofmeditation, which teaches her to choose her thoughts rather than let the worldchoose them for her. And what would a world tour be without Bali, the emeraldgem of the East Indies? As a kindly, wizenedHindu teaches her to balance body and soul, she encounters a suave Braziliancoffee trader (Javier Bardem) who gives her a chance to put her body back inaction.

It’s all a series ofsumptuous Travel Channel scenery, but face it: Who wouldn’t want to spend ayear in those places, especially in the charming company of Julia Roberts? Eat Pray Dream should be the title of thisfilm adaptation.