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The script seems to focus much more on the interpersonal relationships in the story than Gilbert did, which goes a long way toward making the film more likeable than the book. The relationship between Gilbert and her ex-husband is given a bit more depth here. Billy Crudup plays her husband as an restless guy who hasn’t quite figured out what he wants to be just yet. While not without his charm, the young guy who doesn’t know what he wants playing against the successful writer falls against the screen a bit lifelessly. That being said, the interaction here is far more interesting and far less bitter than Gilbert makes it feel in the book.
The film glides pretty uneventfully through the rest of the events leading up to the three-country journey. The biggest departure here is the fact that the film makes no direct mention of a book deal. We don’t even really see Roberts’ Gilbert writing all that much over the course of the film. Appearances being what they are, this Gilbert doesn’t even really seem to be that much of a writer. She’s merely drifting along through the three countries because she wants to - not because she’s making an obscene amount of money traveling the world so that she can pontificate about it for the benefit of those less fortunate.

The film could’ve done more to merely show Roberts contrasted against the exotic locations and beautiful scenery. It would’ve played-up more of the universality of the kind of journey the Gilbert character is going on. Sofia Coppola did a brilliant job of this sort of cinema with Scarlett Johansson in Lost In Translation. Instead of opting for a more unspoken journey, the film ends up trying to exist in stray dramatic interpersonal moments throughout the journey, including persistent feelings for her soon-to-be ex-husband (Crudup,) the boyfriend with whom Gilbert had had a brief affair (a stage actor played by James Franco) and a dashing single father she meets in Bali (played by the suitably handsome Javier Bardem).

While the relations between the Gilbert character and these three men maintain enough weight to almost kind of feel like a plotline, there isn’t enough substance to them to carry the film. As a result, Eat Pray Love suffers from problems with balance that are similar to those found in the book. Too much time on the romantic end of the Gilbert character draws the film’s center away from the inner journey she’s supposed to have taken. The journey itself seems visually quite interesting, but without enough moments alone between Gilbert and the journey, the bigger aspirations of the script fall considerably shorter than they should.
Some of the film’s best moments onscreen are individual moments between an actor and the camera. Roberts has a few really interesting bits of monologue which come across in a much more compelling way than from an author ten years younger than her. Bardem has some characteristically charming moments in the center of the frame. Of particular note is a performance by Richard Jenkins as Richard From Texas - an American Gilbert meets in India. The character never seemed terribly interesting the way Gilbert wrote him - perhaps because her prose style was over-emphasizing how interesting he was. Director Ryan Murphy gives Jenkins enough space to let the character’s charm flow through his section of the narrative somewhat effortlessly.

The Verdict

Though it is popular at the moment, Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love lacks the kind of insight into journeys of self-discovery that would really make it an enduring classic. The pop biography of a rich woman from a wealthy country visiting places with more history to them gets lost somewhere between a somewhat lifeless, uninspired travelogue and a dispassionate series of journal entries. The film adaptation adds considerable charm to the narrative through focusing on the interpersonal interactions that Gilbert doesn’t seem to pay much attention in the book. Though the film has considerably more charm than the book, it still suffers from a split personality. On one hand, it’s an interpersonal drama and on the other it’s a personal journey. The two never quite coalesce in the movie the way they should. A camera has the benefit of being firmly outside Gilbert’s stiflingly claustrophobic head. Theoretically, that camera could have provided the insight into the journey that Gilbert wasn’t able to. Director Ryan Murphy does a pretty good job of bringing together all the right elements in the right order, but deeper insight is lost to those individual elements. Murphy’s Eat Pray Love is substantially less tedious than the book, but it fails to turn Gilbert’s story into a truly enjoyable film.

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