Eat Pray Love (2010)

Film: Eat Pray Love (2010)

Stars: Julia Roberts, James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis, Billy Crudup, Javier Bardem

Director: Ryan Murphy

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Julia Roberts: click here to learn more about Ms. Roberts (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In Notting Hill, there's a memorable scene (possibly the best scene) of Julia Roberts saying "one day, my looks will go, they will discover I can't act, and I will become some sad middle-aged woman who looks a bit like someone who was famous for a while."  In real life, Roberts got a happy ending (and her looks will likely never go-movie star beauty has more endurance than us mere mortals), marrying her husband of 20+ years Danny Moder in 2002.  But her career would never have the same sort of sparkle that it did in the years after her unmatched 1997-2002 run.  Roberts would get $25 million for Mona Lisa Smile in 2003, but the film didn't live up to the giant grosses of Notting Hill and Runaway Bride, and she would spend much of the next two decades alternating between forgettable mid-sized vehicles (Larry Crowne, Duplicity, Mother's Day, Money Monster), and attempts at prestige that went nowhere for her in terms of a return to the Oscars (Charlie Wilson's War, Secret in Their Eyes, and the best of her films/performances during this era, Closer).  While she did get an Oscar nomination in 2013 (for August: Osage County), Roberts, at one point the biggest star in the world, had to resort to category fraud to secure her nomination since it was felt she couldn't compete with costar Meryl Streep, an actress in a different lane than her in the 1990's, but by 2013 Streep had become a far more consistent box office presence.  Just two live-action films during this era can be called "true" hits, ones that would have fit in with her 1990's runs, both out in 2010-the much-maligned Valentine's Day, and our final movie with Roberts, Eat Pray Love, which would set off enormous conversation about the film itself, and would become shorthand for a specific type of "rich white woman finding herself" motif in the years that followed.

(Spoilers Ahead) Eat Pray Love is about the spiritual awakening of Liz Gilbert (a real-life journalist played by Roberts) who decides that the unrest she feels in her marriage to Stephen (Crudup) is too much, and as part of the divorce (and a recent breakup with an actor, played by Franco), she leaves her life in New York City, upending herself financially, and moves to a series of destinations (Italy, India, & Indonesia) where she can try to find meaning in her life.  In these places, she finds friendship, life, adventure, experiences, and food (so, so much food), but until Bali, when she finally opens herself up to a man named Felipe (Bardem), she doesn't admit that what she needs is a willingness to take a risk again, to feel open with another person.  In doing so, and getting married to Felipe, she finally resets the clock, and lives more fully.

You'll notice that I didn't write as much about the plot of Eat Pray Love as I normally do in these reviews, and there's a reason for that-for a film that is 140 minutes long, not a lot really happens.  Sometimes this isn't a bad thing-there are moments in this that are just about watching the simple pleasures of life like a thoughtful meditation or eating a plate of pasta with friends, that gives you a sense of what Liz is trying to get out of this travel.  As someone who is going to go on a trip to Europe in a few weeks (and am, like Liz, both really hopeful that it will give me some new perspectives as well as honestly terrified about taking a leap, by myself, into a place I don't know and into locales where I don't speak the languages), I can understand this.  One of the hallmarks of Eat Pray Love was that it did market a sort of romance about travel that you still see today in lifestyle shows on Netflix and Food Network.  The movie frequently plays with the concept of "cultural appropriation" without really acknowledging that as a concept, but it also does so in a way that at least feels celebratory of those cultures...this is truly about trying to learn about yourself by seeing (and respecting the world).  Liz does not pretend she is an expert in the lives of any of the people she meets, just that she's better for having met them...which feels less like cultural appropriation to me (which this movie has been accused of) and more like cultural appreciation, which I think is a fairer categorization.

But the movie doesn't have much to do beyond that, and in being so long (and in making Liz's journey so central to the story) it falls flat.  Roberts, in her early forties here, looks and acts as beautiful-as-ever, radiant in every moment, but no one else matches that charisma (including the dialogue).  In a sea of potential leading man, neither Franco, Crudup, nor Bardem seem worthy of Roberts herself (even if they might be good enough for the less impressive Liz, who is unusually indecisive for a woman headed into the fifth decade of her life).  Not even a short part for Viola Davis (just off her first Oscar nomination and about to become a movie star in her own right) makes much of a difference here.  The film looks great (putting 3-time Oscar winner Robert Richardson behind the camera can have that effect), but it's empty when you think about it for longer than a minute.

Roberts, as you will know, is still working.  In 2022, she starred in her first non-ensemble romantic comedy since 2011 with George Clooney in Ticket to Paradise (another movie that looks great but needed a much better script), and will be taking on her most interesting-looking role in years in Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt later this fall.  What's in store is a question mark for an actress that perpetually redefines herself (even though she'll always be the exact same Julia Roberts to some audiences, that twinkling waitress they fell for in Mystic Pizza).  Next month, we're going to conclude our sixth season with the woman that spent all of the 1990's as Roberts' chief rival for the title of America's Sweetheart, one whom the media was far kinder too, but unlike Roberts, when she fell from grace, she wasn't able to recover.