‘Eat Pray Love’ Sight Unseen
This week I’m starting a new column on The Ajnabee, a pre-viewing review of a film based only on the film’s trailer. What do you get at first impression, when you see those two odd minutes of scenes pasted together by a professional trailer editor? This is what I see. Feel free to set me straight or share your own gems. If you have a trailer you wish to share, with a short pre-view review, I’ll publish you on here gladly!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crNaJjfY57g
‘Puke Curse Hate’ – or ‘Sit Watch Snooze’ as the blog The Bloodshot Eye, where I got the image above, calls it – is a film I don’t really look forward to seeing. I did not read the book and stand by my principles. When a writer gets an advance to write about her life BEFORE going out there to write about it, it’s a bit fishy to me. And uninteresting. If I read about real life, I want real life, not real life with a hefty advance… As if Gregory David Roberts, the guy who wrote ‘Shantaram’, had gone to his editor to get an advance before dealing drugs, landing in jail and bonding with the gundas of Bombay. Hum… The book would have turned out VERY different, I guarantee it! There is something to be said for just living life and then discovering you might have had an interesting time, which others might be tickled to read about.
So, I see this and I think of Julia Roberts touring India at the same time as I was there, with her family, and how it was in the news that she got the Taj Mahal to close for the day, so she could visit it unbothered by the real Indians there. Sheer mortals are so bothersome to a star. I think Bali’s monkeys caged so they would not bite Mr. Roberts’ children and infect them with real Indonesian rabies. Rabies is such a pesky illness for a star’s kids. And I think that being a hot blooded Florentine, I take offense at how my people are portrayed in the film. It’s great if the book and the film can inspire lonely, bland, middle-aged women to travel the world looking for their own Javier Bardem, travel always does a soul good. But as far as calling it an adventure… NAH!
Oh, and BTW, Naples does not have the best pizza in the world, NYC does! I swear to that fact, Mother’s Neapolitan blood running through my veins and all!
Image courtesy of The Bloodshot Eye
Jitin Hingorani:
Aug 16th, 10 at 16:16
I completely agree with this review! I actually paid $13 to watch this film over the weekend, and I thought it was self-indulgent, overly sentimental, and so bourgeois! “Puke, Curse, Hate” is right on!
Bob Barnett:
Aug 22nd, 10 at 6:58
Hi! I really like your capsule here. I found it by websearching “Eat, Pray, Love, Hate, Curse, Puke” – I wanted to make it symmetric.
Your point about the advance seems right on to me. How could your actions not be affected by how you want them to read? What a phony way to live. I don’t have a particular trailer in mind to tear into, but one day last year there I went to a movie that was preceded by a half-dozen trailers and I think all but one was an action film. Every one included some landmark building or statuary being destroyed. 2012 was one of the films, but I think I saw the Eiffel Tower, Mount Rushmore, the White House, and the Pyramids offed, and I know there were a few more I’m forgetting. Something is wrong here…..