‘Eat Pray Love’ is a mixed bag for book fans

“Eat Pray Love”

Directed by: Ryan Murphy

Starring: Julia Roberts, James… “Eat Pray Love”

Directed by: Ryan Murphy

Starring: Julia Roberts, James Franco

Columbia Pictures

Grade: B

To authors, a movie deal is a godsend, but to fans, it can be a mixed blessing.

Movies often inevitably gloss over those subtleties we find most meaningful in a book and instead extract those overlying themes we felt were most obvious. “Eat Pray Love” makes a solid effort to go into more depth than a Julia Roberts international road trip and has limited success.

When judging a movie on the basis that it was written to epitomize a book — “Eat Pray Love” was originally a memoir by novelist and sometimes journalist Elizabeth Gilbert — it’s the overarching ideas, craftily placed where the audience member will most likely appreciate them, that matter most.

Gilbert’s book is popular, not only for its compelling narrative of a woman who took a leave of absence to travel and find herself, but also for its philosophical ponderings.

The question is, does the movie retain these latter complexities, or does it simply attempt to tell the story?

First off, the plot of the movie does not disappoint. Director and screenwriter Ryan Murphy and screenwriter Jennifer Salt were successful in capturing the basic story with a few unobtrusive additions and subtractions.

This wasn’t an easy task — Gilbert had segmented the book into three sections, each containing 36 vignettes. That adds up to 108 brief episodes, rather than a seamless continuing plot.

But the film manages to retain the most poignant and important moments that capture the essence of the book — for example, when Elizabeth and her Brazilian love interest, Felipe, go swimming, and he quite charmingly explains his physical attraction to her.

However, moments when Gilbert notices a particular fountain in Italy or muses about an Indian boy in ill-fitting clothing are lost due to the time constraints of cinema.

Granted, Murphy does occasionally retain the little details about culture and history that, in the book, aid the reader in understanding Gilbert, such as an e-mail to her ex-boyfriend David about the Augusteum in Rome. In the book, however, these instances often serve as windows into Gilbert’s complex psychology, whereas the diminished movie version is detrimental to her character.

The Elizabeth of the movie is oversimplified. Julia Roberts, without a doubt, nails Gilbert’s self-proclaimed friendliness and sparkle, but we’d expect no less from a woman who made a prostitute endearing.

Unfortunately, the dialogue seems like it was edited to suit a conservative, middle-aged female demographic.

In fact, it probably was. As close to the beginning as page eight of her book, Gilbert says things like, “For instance, perhaps I could remain totally celibate except for keeping a pair of handsome 25-year-old Italian twin brothers as lovers.” But this kind of suggestive humor, along with Gilbert’s tendency toward the occasional self-deprecating quip, is limited. Without the levity to counterbalance her dramatics, Elizabeth in the movie seems to take herself too seriously.

Although the main character is simplified, some of the other characters are played wonderfully, particularly the gruff but patient Richard from Texas (Richard Jenkins) and the undeniably charming and affectionate Felipe (Javier Bardem).

Sadly, even Felipe isn’t done full justice — another aspect the movie fails to nail is the depth and intricacy of his relationship with Elizabeth. With the fickle emotions and constant extremes of the couple in the movie, one would think that Elizabeth’s story was  a never-ending cycle of reverting to old habits of throwing herself into another poor relationship.

Whereas the film redeems itself a little with its provocative questions and Elizabeth’s somewhat light soul searching, “Eat Pray Love” doesn’t speak to the very obvious tenderness and supportiveness of Elizabeth and Felipe’s connection in the book.

Movies are rarely able to epitomize the whole of a written work, but the success of an adaption can be based off whether those involved managed to capture the main ideas. “Eat Pray Love” does a fair job of grasping the gist of the story, though some important components seem to be neglected.