Eat, Pray, Love

Title: Eat, Pray, Love (2010)
Director: Ryan Murphy
Genre: Drama
Lead Actor(s): Julia Roberts
Rating: PG-13
133 minutes

I haven’t read the book. I never really had an interest in seeing the movie for the movie. I didn’t mind seeing it because I saw it with friends. The movie follows Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) after divorcing her husband. She dates a wannabe actor and then decides to spend a year abroad. She starts in Italy (eat), goes to India (pray), and ends in Bali (love). On her travels she meets a colorful cast of characters that help her learn about life and herself.

While this is not Julia Roberts’ best movie, the problems are not due to her. She is not off-putting or completely awkward in the role. The character is surprisingly annoying. She comes across as very self-involved. Despite her life being in a disarray, everyone she comes across is better for having met her.

The only actor whose performance I really like is Richard Jenkins as Richard. I like the actor quite a bit. His character all seems to be one of the few that shows a genuine believable emotion. All the others are very obvious about their acting. Part of it is the characters. They all are too wonderful or too damaged or too static.

The directing also is decent. The shots show off the beauty of the scenery and situations. All the visuals are right for the settings and characters. The thing that brings the film down is the story. I have mentioned the immense problems with the characterizations, but it goes to more than that. This movie is supposed to be about a character who is so emotionally lost that she has to travel the world to get a better understanding of herself. She never seems to really want to become a better person. It all is superficial. I never believe the character for an instant.

From all the hype about the book, I expected at the very least a decent movie. The flaw stems from the book though. It is not the fault of anyone involved. Without changing a lot about the source material, no one could fix the problem with the main character. The best thing about the movie is the poster. I doubt this is how Roberts wanted to jump back into leading roles. At least she got a good trip out of it.

*** 3/10

The Ugly Truth

I apparently forgot to actually publish my review for yesterday. I had written it earlier that day. So there are actually two posts today.

Title: The Ugly Truth (2009)
Director: Robert Luketic
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Lead Actor(s): Gerard Butler, Katherine Heigl
Rating: R
96 minutes

I never really desired to see this movie, but I had had a bad day and wanted to escape to a movie theater and there was really nothing in theaters anyway. It is a typical chick flick and is not particularly inventive. Katherine Heigl is a tight-laced tv producer, Abby Richter, who has no luck with men. Gerard Butler is a pompous, chauvinistic radio host, Mike Chadway, who is given a  segment on Abby’s morning show. Abby is having trouble getting the attention of her doctor neighbor and makes a deal with Mike to teach her “the ugly truth.”

I personally can’t stand Heigl. I feel she often plays annoyingly weak and stereotypical women characters. This character is no different. I realize that Heigl didn’t write the character, but she could have used the character differently or declined to take such an insulting role. In her performance, Heigl only furthers the stereotypes of the character and adds utterly no depth or personality to it.

Gerard Butler at least seems like he is having fun in the character. His is also annoying and insulting. He was, however, the only character that I found the least bit funny. His physical humor was at least believable in contrast to Heigl’s. Yes, he could have done more with the character and no, I don’t think there was any great need to put such a character on screen, but at least he did more than Heigl.

There are ways to use the characters in ways that are fun and interesting. An instance that comes to mind is that of Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good As It Gets. The characters displayed in this movie are one-dimensional and incredibly offense to its core audience. The only thing that is truly funny is the slapstick comedy and even then it has definitely been done better. It was nice though to get out of the summer heat and it didn’t make me hate it as much as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or The Krays.

*** 3/10

The Pagemaster

Title: The Pagemaster (1994)
Director: Pixote Hunt, Joe Johnston
Genre: Family, Adventure
Lead Actor(s): Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd
Rating: G
80 minutes

This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Part of the appeal to me was probably that 3 out of the 5 main characters are books and the vast majority of the movie takes place in a library. By the way, I was as much of a nerd as a kid as I am now. Richard Tyler (Macaulay Culkin) is a young kid who is scared of just about everything. He is sent by his father to get screws for a tree house they are supposed to be building when a downpour starts. Richard runs into the library and meets Mr. Dewey (Christopher Lloyd) and all of a sudden Richard is cartoonified and trying to find his way out of the library with the help of Adventure (Patrick Stewart), Fantasy (Whoopi Goldberg), and Horror (Frank Welker). Along the way he meets such famous literary characters as Dr. Jekyll, Captain Ahab, and The Queen of Hearts.

Now obviously we find certain movies incredibly entertaining when we are kids and then when forced to watch them by younger siblings, nieces/nephews, and/or babysitting clients, you feel like your brain is slowly leaking out your ears by the atrocity. Sadly The Pagemaster is one of these. Now I love the characters, but the plot is so horribly weak. There is never enough time to develop any aspect fully. Richard Tyler begins completely one-dimensionally as the fraidy cat kid who gets picked on by everyone and whose dad seems to harbor resentment against him. After going through the library, all of a sudden he is magically brave and awesome for a young kid. I suppose that each book is supposed to be a stereotype of the genre, but I felt like there could have been much more substance to the characters.

There is a way to make good kid movies. This has been proven repeatedly. Children will enjoy this movie, especially if they understand the literary references. Adults will tune out or want to bring a real book to read for the 80 minutes this plays. When I was a kid, I would have rated this probably an 8 or 9. Now that I have been introduced to real movies and have an attention span longer than an hour and a half, the rating dips quite a bit.

*** 3/10