Eat, Pray, Love was always going to be a disaster in some sense. That’s the way I see it. The book and the film are the other side of self-absorbed, narcissistic, hyper-consumer-driven, woe-is-the-privileged-white-lady bullsh-t that Sex and City represents. Where SATC’s problems had to do with the search for love when you’re a shopaholic, narcissistic sociopath, Eat, Pray, Love seems to be about the search for oneself, for one’s “soul” when you’re a a shopaholic, narcissistic sociopath. It’s still about consumerism, only the material you’re trying to buy – shoes, love, a soul – changes. In literature, the category is called “priv-lit” (Pajiba and Bitch Magazine have a great piece about it here). In films, it’s called “disastrous” or perhaps just “horrible”.

So how did the adaptation from book to screen go? The reviews are in, and they are… um… well, not all that awesome. In defense of this film, I think most reviewers are men and thus, not the target audience. In defense of the reviewers, I’m sorry they had to watch that. Some highlights:

Roger Ebert: “If intelligence, wit and exuberance are what you’re looking for, Julia Roberts is an excellent choice as the movie’s star. You can see how it would be fun to spend a year traveling with Gilbert. A lot more fun than spending nearly two hours watching a movie about it. I guess you have to belong to the narcissistic subculture of Woo-Woo.”

USA Today’s Claudia Puig: “It’s a thin story, on paper as well as on screen. A privileged woman ends her marriage for vague reasons and decides to get in touch with her true self. She ventures to Italy for the cuisine, goes to India to meditate and finds love in Indonesia. The whole quest feels a bit forced, though it’s an appealing travelogue. The soul-searching is glib: Liz absorbs aphorisms and spouts truisms as if she has unlocked the mystery of life.”

WaPo’s Ann Hornaday: “Roberts, who cannily chose to produce “Eat Pray Love” as the perfect vehicle for her alternately dazzling and relatable talents, manages to tamp down the book’s most grating self-congratulatory tone. But in the movie, as in the book, all talk of God, the universe and love and light aside, there’s no doubt who the real star is. As a middle-aged Dorothy at large in a New Age Oz, her Liz Gilbert mostly wanders around smiling, sometimes crying, but always somehow looking like a goddess herself, recently arrived to show others the way — whether she’s urging a Swedish student in Rome to eat more pizza or telling a teenage Indian girl reluctantly succumbing to an arranged marriage that she’s visualizing a happy life for her.”

More reviews are here, at Rotten Tomatoes, where the film is up to 38%. Oh well. Most people are saying Julia does the best she can do with a dumb story and not-so-awesome direction. What’s particularly surprising to me is that Eat, Pray, Love is not being pushed to win the weekend. It’s strange – Julia used to win opening weekends at the drop of a hat.