Eat, Pray, Love - Movie vs. Book

I saw Eat, Pray, Love yesterday evening. I often get really annoyed when I watch movies based on books that I enjoyed reading, but that wasn’t really the case this time around. Yes, the movie was different, but it wasn’t wrong like many of the “based on the best-selling novel” movies that come out nowadays. It was somewhat condensed and cut out some things, but the filmmakers didn’t make unnecessary changes. In fact, they didn't outright change anything, and I commend them for that. I suppose adapting a movie from a piece of non-fiction might automatically make drifting from the original story more difficult and just plain inadvisable.

I will say that while I enjoyed the movie, I did feel like it was lacking if you look at it compared to the book. In the book things feel so much more personal and inspiring. In both cases, the story is about self discovery and love and inspiration, but I think that the book got the message across much better than the movie.

I liked the movie. I would watch it again (though I don’t know if I’d spend another $11. That’s some valuable book money…), and would probably enjoy watching it again. I also liked the music that they used and the cinematography was great.

It says a lot that I not only sat through an entire movie based on a book that I really liked and didn’t spend the entire time muttering “wrong wrong wrong” under my breath, but also that I enjoyed watching it and allowed myself to really just watch and only have the book in the back of my mind. So yes, I would recommend seeing the movie, but I would almost insist that you also read the book (preferably before seeing the movie, but to each his or her own, I suppose).