4/10
The book on which this film is based is wise, witty, insightful and beautifully written. The film purloined from the book is none of those things.
Instead we have Julia smiling, Julia eating, Julia smiling, Julia cycling, Julia looking sad, Julia walking down an Italian street, Julia smiling ... you get the idea. Everything has been turned inside out, trivialised, prettified and made shallow and transient. Just so that Julia Roberts could have a leading role.
Let me be more specific about the ways in which the film is different to the film: Julia is 10 years older than Gilbert was when she spent her year abroad, while Javier Bardem is the same age as Roberts (in the book, Felipe was 15 years older). The film glosses over the pain and suffering Gilbert had from the end of her first marriage, ignores the difficulties Gilbert had with her act of generosity in Bali, bypasses the serious spiritual dimension of the time in the ashram, manufactures a fake argument so we can have a fake reunion, and renders an intense and interesting personal journey into a travelogue with all the depth of Hello magazine.
I'm not saying that I know how it could have been done differently. The nature of a memoir is that it is from the inside looking out - observational, philosophical, detailed. A movie is the opposite. It fixates on the subject of the memoir so that her exterior is what we see, and that is dear Julia. I don't blame her for wanting a leading role about a woman taking charge of her life, and I'm not suggesting another actress might have done it better - although if we could remove 80% of the slushy, mushy, trashy shallow music on the soundtrack, things would have been more bearable. What I am saying is that if you've read the book, then I can't see the point in watching the film - you'll only feel let down. And if you haven't read the book, well then you're better off catching up, because this bears very little resemblance to it.
