from Standpoint Magazine:
Maybe what was once seen as a little girl's fairy-story is now seen by baby-boomer women as an inalienable right. A little self-knowledge would go a long way here. But this movie is not about self-knowledge. The audience will come out of Eat Pray Love none the wiser on how to put their stuff in order. Rather, it's all about looking beautiful and having hunks lust after you in beautiful settings, with some faded old Sixties mantras thrown in to add to that feel of quality. And there is something distasteful about the kind of pick-and-mix, magpie-like attitude to different cultures that this film shamelessly displays.
In any case travel — the modern variety anyway — increasingly narrows the mind, I find. It's become a fetish, a manifestation of personal disquiet rather than a genuine desire to explore. Gilbert was wrong and Dorothy was right — you don't need to go any further than your own backyard. Or try therapy, if you must.
It is, after all, very rare to come across anybody who has genuinely been changed by a stint living here or there, whatever they might claim to the contrary. Travel, in and of itself, never makes a person more interesting. A boring person's take on their experiences will be the same whether they're in Bali or Boston — even if they do look like Julia Roberts.