‘Eat, Pray, Love’ … under the Hollywood sun

Forget what I said immediately below. I ended up going first to see “Eat, Pray, Love.” So, yeah, you now know who oversees the social calendar in my house.

And what did I think?

Well, let’s just say that this is about as good as Hollywood can do with such a story, though that’s not as big a compliment as it might seem. “Eat, Pray, Love” is far better than a similarly themed film, “Under the Tuscan Sun,” which could have been titled “Cry, Eat, Love.” Of course, even as I type this, I can hear the voices of those complaining about my not recognizing the subtle differences between the two films.

“Under the Tuscan Sun” is nowhere near as serious as “Eat, Pray, Love,” they cry. It, you see, has nothing to do with prayer.

OK. But tlet’s count the ways the two films are similar.

1. Both are about middle-class white women who, fed up with their lives, head to exotic places as a way of reinventing themselves (both start out in Italy, but only one stays there).

2. Both star beautiful big-name actresses, subbing for our far less glamorous real-life heroines ( Diane Lane for Frances Mayes in “Tuscan Sun,” Julia Roberts for Elizabeth Gilbert in the other).

3. Both are based on best-selling books.

4. Both have protagonists who end up cultivating friends who, almost to a fault, have the kind of physical qualities found only in a Hollywood casting office. Oh, and the range of characters, from a Swedish expatriate to a Balinese “holy man” emerge directly from the text titled Hollywood Stereotyping 101.

5. Both have protagonists who end up falling into affairs with men who are so, well, beautiful that … see No. 4.

6. Both have protagonist whom seem NOT to have to depend on a daily job for buying basic needs (that’s particularly so for Roberts’ character, whose hovel of an apartment in Rome would still run a couple thousand euro a month).

7. Both have protagonists who endure love affairs (in Roberts’ case a rebound affair) with gorgeous hunks (some Italian actor in “Tuscan Sun,” James Franco in “Love”). Again, see No. 4.

8. Both have protagonists who, after a bit of a struggle, show an amazing facility for language acquisition (particularly Roberts, who not only learns Italian well enough to order for the table in Rome but also picks up some dialects in India and, finally, Bali).

9. Both have protagonists whose lives end up looking so glamorous that it’s difficult to empathize with their emotional stuggles. (Lane’s character may live in a ramshackle villa, but that villa is in the Tuscan hills outside Cortona. Have you ever been there? It’s heavenly . And Roberts’ character? Even walking the poverty-stricken streets of whatever Indian city she’s living in looks like she’s posing for a Travelsmith catalog advertisement.)

10. Both end up happy. Sure, they struggle to get there. But once they get over themselves, no easy feat, they decide that they have it pretty good.

Hell. I knew that five minutes in …

Below : The trailer for “Eat, Pray, Love.”