Upon seeing a teaser trailer for Eat Play Love about a year ago, I wrote it off as just another boring, unwatchable Julia Roberts movie. Well, for fans of erotic cinema, nothing could be further from the truth. Many of you will be surprised to learn, as I was, that Eat Pray Love is actually a re-make of the 1978 adult classic Debbie Does Dallas. The setting has been updated, and some plot details have been changed, but the overall theme remains the same. Kudos to Julia Roberts for coming such a long way from the days of Pretty Woman where she needed a leg double for the canned love scenes. This time, she not only bares it all, she DOES it all. When she’s not using her famously enormous mouth to swallow James Franco whole, she’s using her famously sweet voice to deliver some of the raunchiest dialogue a mainstream audience will ever hear.
Set in a romantic Italian village, it doesn’t take long for America’s Sweetheart to be corrupted by the lustful locals. Roberts travels abroad to find herself, but she doesn’t even make it out of the airport before she loses all of her inhibitions. Javier Bardem plays the customs agent who performs the extremely thorough full-body search which kicks off a two-month long sex romp. This flesh binge doesn’t end until all the village men under the age of 60 sigh with exhaustion at the site of Roberts approaching. This weariness, I want to be clear, is not shared by the audience. Eat Pray Love is nothing but scene after scene of acrobatic sinning, yet it never gets tiresome. The novelty of a prudish, aging movie star slutting up the countryside never wears off. In taking this daring role, I can only hope that Julie Roberts has set a precedent that might be followed by more attractive actresses in the future.
Tags: Eat Pray Love, James Franco, Javier Bardem, Julia Roberts