Without discounting the importance of Gilbert's decision... it can't be removed from its context: it's a story about choosing self over prescribed generic femininity, a world of your own making over the deeply patriarchal American upper-middle class.

An engaging but deliberate chick flick at times, Eat, Pray, Love has the quintessential chick flick star at the helm with Roberts, who played the role beautifully...

A tiresome, humourless, lifeless, overlong dirge in which the lofty pretention to say something deep about the quest for self and the female condition all gets blown away by an insipid, off-the-shelf romantic-movie ending.

There’s some love along the way, and a little bit of praying, but it’s the “Eat” in the title that gets the most attention, like a neon sign in the window of an all-night diner.