Something deeply disturbing about this film and its message

+1

Well, I commend you for actually being able to watch this movie. With a lame title like this and Julia Roberts as the lead I don't think you could chain me up and make me watch this.

Well put, intotrance - pretty much sums up my feeling.

The only thing I have to add - and it's coming in on a tangent - is I think this movie generates such negative responses because of that word 'inspiration'.

Whether it wants to assume the mantle or not, this is a story of discovery, and at some level I think it wants to inspire. The problem for me.... the movies I have catalogued under 'inspirational' are The Miracle Worker, My Left Foot, Gandhi, The Elephant Man, even in some respects The Diary of Anne Frank. I could add to the list but you get my point. The common theme to all of them is overcoming obstacles to achieve what most of us take for granted. They celebrate the human spirit and we bask in their glow (that is written without irony - this movies make me feel good about the future of humanity.)

The problem is the Roberts character already has those things, and still she spends an entire movie whining about me, me, me.

I'm not sure if it's a new (disturbing) trend, but the Roberts character in EPL reminds me of the Julie character in 'Julie & Julia' - self-centered, wretched personalities you'd run from if encountered in real life.

The book should have been titled 'eat..love and indulge'....in every selfish whim available to her....it is too bad she never came across the quote 'people travel the world searching for answers and come back home to find them'...I find the message of this book terribly disturbing. It only fuels the me attitude of this age and the sense of entitlement that comes with this generation. The consensus is I can hurt anyone as long as it makes me feel better...no consenquenses...noone else matters at the end. I do not envision myself travelling to look for my inner peace, rather I take the peace that i already feel within myself and merge it with the beauty and peace I know exists in a world where sometimes people do not undersand just how blessed we already are.....love your answer by the way...true peace and happiness is found with in us...

I agree and I'd also like to add that the whole time she seemed to want to find a way to be happy without a man in her life, but she never really ends up doing that. She just wound up right back where she started... we all know relationships are for the most part pretty wonderful in the beginning but it wouldn't surprise me if a few years down the road she dumps Bali man too and runs around the world again. "You can't change yourself by changing scenery." If she were really discovering herself and being happy on her own it would have been a much different and better movie, but she needs male attention.

I agree...I found the heroine selfish & shallow & totally unlikable.

FYI, I am a woman. I do object to any comments (either here or in the reviews) from people implying that female viewers likely don't see this character or story negatively. I've seen this issue with many RomComs, and this one is especially bad. At least most give us some justification by making the husband/bf a cheating jerk before the new romantic interest appears. This one offered nothing to temper this character's hideous actions to make her sympathetic.

Spoilers ahead....

What I found interesting is how the movie touched on her shallowness a few times, almost like it was aware of this. The husband telling her off was sympathetic to me. Maybe he was supposed to seem ridiculous, but he seemed RIGHT. Her "revelation" in Italy that "food is good" was so vacuous & stupid I surely thought it had to be a joke. Is it some puritanical east coast thing to feel guilt over pleasurable leisure time or "doing nothing"? I have no idea how this is supposed to ring true with the female audience.

Then, there's the meditation resort (what else can it be called?) when she goes to India. There's mention of a gift shop & the guru not being there (but not in NYC either; she doesn't exist!) & then she gets put into position of some kind of hostess/guide... again, I think, surely, this must be mocking the pseudo spirituality going on here that amounts to a self-absorption & showy displays of fake altruism, not to mention a BUSINESS. But nope...we're supposed to take this as serious spiritual truth-seeking.

Finally, the old wise man in Bali doesn't recognize her & it's implied he says the same crap to everyone to make a buck. Again, I see a glimmer of poking fun at this woman & her "self-discovery journey", but then it's dropped in favor him being some kind of mentor to her.

At the end, she learns nothing. Everything she does is something someone told her she needed, so she didn't really figure anything out for herself. She's now just fitting some new social ideal, one of the "spiritual, adventurous person" instead of "do it all career wife". She learned to forgive herself for something she had little hesitation to do or guilt over to begin with, which seems more like learning how to NOT take responsibility for your actions or acknowledge your own flaws. She can't even decide if she loves the Bardem character until the old wise man thinks for her & tells her she does. Before that, she blames this guy for throwing her "balance" off, instead of seeing herself as the problem. If this was reality, she'd repeat her cycle with him.

It would've been far more interesting had it fully explored this aspect of her phony self-discovery & those who make money off it, but that's asking too much from a RomCom & Julia Roberts movie...

Spot on man. The woman I watched it with loved it........
They actually invited the Author to be in the "TED" talks. And guess what, it was "me, me me, me...".
Who woulda thunk it?

I couldn't have worded it better. Roberts, who looks drawn and hasn't aged well, did a good job playing the part of a narcissist, discontented wife whose only desire in life is to live up to being the typical self-absorbed American wife - which she already is yet it isn't enough! What these other marvelous countries have to do with such a mindset - I will never understand. My best guess would be that America's Hollyweirdos have no clue as to what other cultures actually do.

The producers didn't even study up on Italian culture before writing about Italy. That disturbs me greatly since Italy is my home with my Italian born husband who thought this was ridiculous and didn't believe me when I said "yes, for the most part this is how American women really are!" I was born in America, but this is exactly the type of shallow, self indulgent, attitude of entitlement that I left America for in order to escape from it all. I was appalled on one hand and relieved to see the other comments here by people who see the same thing.

Awful!