Eat, Pray, Love

At the request of a co-worker (and in an attempt to make clear that I won't only be reviewing genre-trailers on this blog) I will take a look at the trailer for Eat, Pray, Love, a new coming-of-middle-age movie starring an increasingly-rare Julia Roberts.

Motherhood has kept Julia Roberts from headlining many movies in recent years, which the trailer knows. By keeping her a secret for as long as it can (about thirty seconds) they reveal her with one of those romantic-comedy pops where the screen goes quiet and then quickly goes to white with a gentle cymbal crash, indicating mostly, "Hey look! It's Julia Roberts!"

The photography did stand out to me in this trailer, as I found some unusual lighting and camera movement choices that pulled the material out of the more normal fare its peers offer.

While not altogether a bad trailer, one thing this does that I personally can't stand is presenting running sentences broken apart by segments of film. That is to say, when a trailer says, "All she wanted..." then cuts to footage from the movie, then comes back to say, "was another chance..." then does it again, then comes back a third time to say, "at true love."

This annoys me as my attention span is usually so short that I fail to string the entire sentence together, only picking up pieces of what the words on the screen are telling me. And unless those pieces pack serious punch by themselves, then I don't even care what they're saying.

'Eat, Pray, Love's trailer brings nothing particularly new to the table, which is to be expected as movies of this type go. That fact remains heartbreaking because the story of exploring oneself is so full of possibility and the movies so capable of uniqueness that for it to fall into the category of 'typical' is to do a disservice to the concept (and as is often the case, to the film).

While the movie will no doubt delight its audience (Julia Roberts is always appealing) the trailer fails to insist to me that I put much effort into seeing this film. While admittedly not their target demographic, this trailer earns a "Maybe on TNT."

Until next time!