I recently remembered a scathing review of the film "Eat Pray Love" (2010) written by the Norwegian reviewer Espen Svenningsen Rambøl, who completely tears it apart.
It was published first in Dagsavisen, but for some reason they have since removed it from their webpages. You can read it in Norwegian at oa.no, though.
Anyway, it's very funny and I thought English speaking people should have the chance of catching it as well, so I took the liberty of translating it for you.
The Norwegian title translated to English is "Eat Love Live", by the way.
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Puke hate zzz. Bore yourself to death with this year's worst film.
An ode to selfishness that outperforms even the "Sex and the City" girls when it comes to mindless and shallow self-worship. Based on the memoirs/travel book by US journalist Elizabeth Gilbert, who spent a fortune on a spiritual hunt for happiness, duly documented in the bestseller "Eat, Pray, Love".
It's interesting that the word "Pray" is replaced with "Live" in the Norwegian translation of the title, since a big part of this story is a mixture of new age clichés, quasi-religiousness and a broad "love thy self" philosophy.
In the movie Liz Gilbert is played by Julia Roberts, an over-privileged women in her midlife crisis, who is suffering horribly in her immense luxury house with her well-intentioned husband Stephen (Billy Crudup). It certainly isn't easy to be so rich, loved and white. Because a woman like her deserves to be so much happier.
One night Liz falls to her knees, cries and prays to God about what she should do to feel more satisfied. God's answer is simple: You are a self-centered, whiny hussy who has nothing to complain about, and you should get your shit together ASAP. And then God gives her cancer.
No, wishful thinking: God's real answer is that Liz should divorce, get rid of all obligations and go on a one-year vacation to find herself. So Liz travels to the third world and helps rape victims in Sierra Leone, fights for women's rights in Iran and does volunteer work in a refugee camp in Darfur.
No, that was also wrong. Sorry. Liz goes to Italy to eat pasta, to India to meditate in an ashram and then to Bali to have sex with Javier Bardem. Now THAT is self-development.
After much soul-searching Liz finds spiritual awakening and comes to an important realization: She must learn to love herself more. If there's something Julia Roberts definitely doesn't need to hear, it's that she must love herself even more.
"Eat, Love, Live" is truly the ultimate ego trip.
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