Valentine’s Day Advice for Julia Roberts: Eat, Pray, Dump Your Agent

If things were different, I’d have no axe to grind with Julia Roberts. She’s a movie star and does what movie stars are supposed to do: get your face plastered on 80-foot high billboards and whine about the paparazzi, mix multimillion paydays with occasional low-budget Oscar stabs, compulsively marry and divorce (at least once to a grim Texan singer with a thyroid condition), and otherwise demand silk hand towels and raspberry bon-bons in your hotel suite and berate stage grips whenever the latest hubbie is on the outs. Ok, our fact-checking staff took the week off, so don’t hold me to any of this…but with movie stars (and people in general) it’s always best to assume the worst.

But the real point here, as I already mentioned, is that Julia is probably just swell. Even her breakthrough role, Pretty Woman, considered by many to be the chickiest of chick flicks, is actually something very different from our reviled genre of that-woman-who-could-be-you discovering some eternal truth and/or true love itself by following her heart right to the…er, box office. A story about a prostitute who snags a millionaire is in fact your good ol’ fashioned fairy tale, y’know, like stuff that can never happen. And hey, we are not here to bash Cinderella (though she can get pretty annoying too…).

Of course both before and after Juliarella schtupped her Prince Charming, she has accumulated a long list of puke-jerker roles in bona fide chick flicks: from Mystic Pizza to My Best Friend’s Wedding to Mona Lisa Smile. Fortunately for the sake of humankind, we have assigned ourselves the formidable task of sabotaging the next, and maybe biggest and baddest of them all: Eat Pray Love.

But first, we have this past weekend’s Valentine’ Day movie, ingeniously titled…uh…Valentine’s Day. Here Julia pulls off her version of late-career Marlon Brando, appearing on screen for upwards of 10 minutes, no doubt for the cool rate of two million smackaahs a minute.  Don’t ask me what role she plays or what this asinine production is about. Save it to say that it is a waste of everything: time, money, Julia’s bon-bons, the ink that reviewers have used to bash it. If you happened to have seen it, there are two possible explanations for why you’re reading this right now…A. your web browser is busted B. you have finally stumbled out of the theater after such a travesty and found us the way Moses discovered the burning friggin’ bush.

There are, in any case, plenty of you out there, either to save or pity. The appropriately initialed VD shot to the top of the box office chart, cashing in 52 million bucks in its first weekend. Our little rant and all the big bad reviews obviously mean nothing in the face of well-executed marketing campaign — and right now, some icy Hollywood executive in an SUV hybrid is on his cell phone taking credit for green-lighting Julialicious’ 20 million role. The commentary in the trade press, and beyond, will be self-congratulatory and celebratory and someone will even declare that just such a vacuous box-office hit is the clearest sign to date that the worldwide economic crisis is over.

Still, we are focused on the long view. And in particular, in this moment, on Julia’s career. The filming for Eat Pray Love is in the can, the final editing is getting wrapped, and the glaze-eyed sharks of the publicity department are set to take over. It would all seem destined for another Victory for America’s favorite actress. Only this time, we are here too. And right now, to mark Valentine’s Day, the holiday and the film, I would like to address myself directly to Julia…

Don’t take this the wrong way. Like your fabulous new girlfriend Elizabeth Gilbert, you are simply collateral damage in the war we must wage. The loathing tone, the four-letter words, the general disgust with that smile of yours is actually nothing personal. Indeed, this is for your own good. We care more about you than that money-grubbing agent of yours! It’s been too long since the whole Erin Brokinwhich thing. Where is that mix of roles? When are you gonna tank up to 195 lbs for that Angela Merkel biopic? You’ve been too focused on the box office, on those quintessentially Julia roles, and if you don’t snag another Oscar nomination soon you’ll go down in history as just another Sandra Bullock. But if before August, we can manage to sabotage this next monstrosity, you will be liberated, and maybe Meryl Streep will even stop bad-mouthing you behind your back. But it’s understandable if you still don’t see the benefits of our protests…and as always, feel free to take it out on that idiot stage grip.

-JEFF

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