In Eat Pray Love Julia Roberts  has perfected her technique to where she acts with the vertical veins running through her forehead. As directed by Ryan Murphy (adapted by Murphy and Jennifer Salt from the novel by Elizabeth Gilbert) this vehicle of personal discovery starts out at highway speeds only to find increasing bumps in the narrative road.

Roberts plays Liz Gilbert a woman whose marriage just isn’t working but is so caught in her repeating modes of being that she bounces from the same situation to the same situation. So it’s little surprise that she moves from disinterested husband (Billy Crudup) to a new boyfriend that looks like a younger version of Crudup (James Franco channeling an egotistical actor).

Murphy finds an interesting visual style to frame Roberts in her encounters with men while also finding ways to show her true emotion. But as much as she practically bleeds tears at times she always resorts to her trademark laugh, which tends to negate much of what has come before.

Roberts abandons her Gotham lifestyle to find herself, first in Italy (the food scenes blow Under the Tuscan Sun away), then in India, with the entire narrative framed by excursions to Bali.

What starts out fresh and seemingly original melts away to cliché characters and dialogue courtesy of Javier Bardem and Richard Jenkins. Spiritual salvation seems within easy grasp of Liz Gilbert but alas it fades away even while she perfects her yoga training. Maker no mistake, Eat Pray Love never stoops to the lower depths of, say, Sex and the City 2, but all the same you find your interest meter rapidly decreasing as the film unwinds.

- Michael Bergeron