LMN
Lifetime Movie Network’s newest ‘Sizzling Summer Nights’ thriller is more of a fizzle as Eat, Pray, Lie. blatantly steals the title and the basic concept of the popular Julia Roberts feature film Eat Pray Love, confining the setting to California, adding in some yoga, and forgetting to show anyone eating or praying … but there are a lot of lies, so they got that part right.
Eat, Pray, Lie. opens with a young woman named Melissa (Scout Tayui-Lepore), threatening to tell a man, whose face we never see, that she’s going to rat him out to his fiancée and as he leaves her cat tries to follow, but she grabs the cat and they watch the man get into his car and leave. The next morning Melissa wakes up and is looking for the cat. Opening the front door she finds the collar with a note warning her that if she doesn’t keep quiet she’s next.
One year later, Sophia (Chelsea Rose Cook) and Will (Jake Foy) are happily married and living in Sophia’s ‘dream home’. He is a successful attorney and she is launch her own business as a therapist out of her home. Sophia receives an unexpected client, one who claims she was referred by Will, and the woman knows a whole lot more about Will than any other woman should unless she’s slept with him. Yep, it’s Melissa and it took her a year to track Sophia down because she didn’t know Will’s real name, but here she is warning Sophia that Will isn’t who he says he is and … he killed her cat. Sophia is shaken and later asks Will if he’s been cheating on her and he denies doing anything. She clarifies that she is speaking about before they were married, and when she mentions the name Melissa his face drops, admitting without a word that he did indeed cheat on Sophia while they were engaged (in his defense they were having issues so he didn’t even know if they were going to get married … which is a lousy defense). Sophia demands Will move out to give her some space so she can process everything and figure out what their future is, and he goes but not willingly. Sophia’s bestie Hailey (Kiarra Raine) has never liked Will so she’s not broken up about the pause on that relationship, and does not object when the cute guy in their yoga class begins hitting on Sophia. Sophia kind of enjoys the attention and she and Jonathan (Zane Haney) have some drinks after class, and she runs into him again the next day at the coffee shop. Is the universe trying to tell her something?
Later one night at home, Sophia hears some noises in the house and when she goes to investigate she sees someone dressed all in black and wearing a mask. She frightens off the intruder and calls Will to let him know what happened. The police assure her that it was likely a random break-in and she scared the perp as much as he scared her. Will arrives to console Sophia and make sure she’s safe, hoping she’ll let him stay at the house but he’s quickly followed by Jonathan, who shows Sophia more than some friendly concern and affection. Will is not happy because while he wants to mend their relationship, Sophia seems to already be moving on. To help put Sophia’s mind, body and soul at ease, Jonathan invites her — and Hailey — to a yoga retreat at Big Sur, strictly platonic, and Hailey is more than eager to get away herself. Sophia agrees and learns that Jonathan is even going to be an instructor at the retreat.
LMN
When they arrive at the retreat, Sophia gets settled in her weird little cabin in the woods (one room with a huge window facing the forest, no bathroom, shower outside is way down a path and lacking any privacy), she and Hailey take Jonathan’s intense yoga class, and Hailey ends up flirting with a German guy named Gabriel. Things seem to be going well with Sophia and Jonathan but he begins to get a little more than platonic with his actions, at one point leaning in for a kiss. He apologizes but he does not seem to take the rejection well, his behavior becoming more disturbing. At one point Sophia goes to take a nap and when she wakes up someone has put a blanket over her. Late one night she hears something outside and sees Jonathan (dressed all in black) standing next to a tree, staring at her through the absurdly large window (it’s literally the wall of the cabin). Sophia begins to be concerned and considers leaving — Hailey assured her they would leave any time she felt like she needed to — but when she tells Hailey what’s been happening (without actually giving her any details other than she’s feeling a little uncomfortable), Hailey talks her into staying because they paid a lot for the weekend and, well, she’s got Gabriel to pursue. Sophia agrees to stay and tries to avoid Jonathan, but after he leaves a bottle of wine and two glasses with a note that says ‘lighten up’ at her door, that’s the last straw and she calls Will. Will arrives and wants to confront Jonathan first thing, but Sophia asks him to remain calm. She also says he can stay with her in her cabin. After he gets settled and wants to shower, she tells him where it is and he walks the path down to the little shower area. He’s just gotten his shirt off when Jonathan shows up and Sophia can see the two men arguing, leading Will to push Jonathan so hard that he stumbles back and cracks his skull on one of the rocks. They are questioned by the police and allowed to return home, but things are not adding up for Sophia when at yoga class one of the women mentions she saw Will and Jonathan having drinks at a bar. Sophia is certain Jordyn is wrong, but is she?
Sophia begins to do some digging and revisits the police in Big Sur where she learns of Jonathan’s legal issues surrounding a pyramid scheme he was running to make his yoga retreat a financial success. She also grows more concerned when she goes to ask Melissa some questions about Will and learns from her sister that she allegedly committed suicide (neither her sister nor Sophia believes that). Could Will have hired Jonathan to aggressively pursue Sophia so she’d take him back? Was the murder intentional? Did Will kill Melissa and her cat? Was Hailey involved somehow? The answers are revealed by the end, but there are few surprises in store if you’re paying attention (or have seen any LMN relationship thriller).
Eat, Pray, Lie. isn’t the worst film LMN has ever aired, but it is one of the most tedious, meandering its way to the big conflict between Will and Jonathan, then rushing its way to the big ‘reveal’ that you probably already guessed midway through the movie. The fun of that is just waiting to see if you were right … but these movie rarely surprise in the end and it’s pretty obvious what’s going on (I have a habit of stopping the movie at some point and, correctly, revealing what I believe will be revealed like some armchair Columbo). Sometimes you can figure it out because the writing is just bad or too simplistic, but we really can’t fault the script for being too obvious in this case. It’s fine. What really telegraphs the ‘plot twist’ here are the performances, and that is either the choice of the actors or the director or both. With just a look or the way a specific piece of dialog is delivered, an actor can easily make their character look completely suspicious, leading the viewer to come to the conclusion that will be revealed at the end of the movie. That happens here about midway through — that’s when I paused the movie and laid out the rest of the story, correctly — so it then became a waiting game of how long it would take Sophia to figure it out. And she still hadn’t put all the pieces together five minutes before the end credits rolled, so all of that build up over the previous 85-or-so minutes has to be rushed in the final four or five, cheating us out of any real satisfaction of Sophia actually becoming her own person.
LMN
The performances are fine. Chelsea Rose Cook’s Sophia is a little all over the place and her performance is a bit flat. She had a lot more fun chewing the scenery in Kidnapped in a Small Town and did some of her best LMN work in Secret Life of the Surgeon’s Wife as the best friend screwing her friend’s husband. Here she’s just eternally clueless to the point you want to grab her and shake her to wake her up. Kiarra Raine is also okay as Hailey, sometimes just saying her lines, but often saying them in a way and with a look that makes one wonder if she isn’t plotting against Sophia, especially when Sophia wants to leave the retreat. She did not have Sophia’s back at that point, and her performance felt more like gaslighting than just selfishness … but of course Sophia had to stay at the retreat for the rest of the story to play out (so we’ll have to chalk that bit of her performance up to the writing).
Jake Foy, who was completely charming in Hallmark’s The Wish Swap does a mostly convincing job of playing Will as the devoted husband. The subtle way his face changes when Sophia mentions Melissa was excellent, speaking volumes without a single word. It’s not until later in the movie that his performance changes just enough that you have no doubt he’s up to no good and by the time Jonathan confronts him at the shower, even though you can’t hear them, you are pretty certain something is going on between them. Zane Haney does a good job as Jonathan, really appearing to be a good guy at first although he does begin moving way too fast on Sophia after she makes it crystal clear that she wants to keep things in the Friend Zone for now. He does a really good job of changing from nice guy to slimeball. Kia Dorsey doesn’t get much screen time as Jordyn, the totally clueless valley girl at the yoga classes, but she brings a nice touch of comedic energy to her scenes. More of her, please!
Overall, Eat, Pray Lie. is just fine as a thriller. The story may be predictable, the acting is okay to really good, and the locations are pretty spectacular. Apparently Sophia’s cabin is a well-known structure called Deer Cabin in Topanga Canyon, California, and the dome where the yoga class was held is also in Topanga, both designed by architect Peter Staley, so we’ll assume the bulk of the resort filming took place in that area (which is more than five-and-a-half hours from Big Sur, but who’s counting). One thing the production team when wild with — or perhaps the decor was already part of the rental in which they filmed Sophia’s house — is the artwork on the walls. Everything from Picasso to Chagall to what is apparently a paint by numbers portrait of Freddie Mercury and everything in-between. The amount of artwork was insane, but even more insane was how the one Picasso in the bedroom was hung just so the bottom left corner of the frame overlapped the top of the light switch plate. Only a sociopath would hang a painting like that. If nothing else, the movie looks expensive. (Side note: a climatic moment between Sophia and Will looks like it was filmed at the same exact place as the fall from the window scene in Deadly Girls Trip.) Not the best, not the worst, but interesting enough if you have some time to kill.
Eat Pray Lie has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.