14 DAY TRIAL // Though boasting a bona fide A-lister as the lead, “Eat Pray Love” comes with an embargo on critics’ reviews until Friday release. The few reviews that did get out are negative.
It’s not unusual for movie studios to bar critics from printing reviews of early screenings of a film, though that usually bespeaks a lack of confidence in the film for the obvious reasons.
If the studio believes the movie is bad and allows critics to say so in their reviews, this will inevitably translate into poorer sales once the movie opens in theaters.
Clearly, no one expected this to apply to Julia Roberts’ latest production, “Eat Pray Love,” but this seems to be the case, Showbiz411 indicates.
In other words, critics are not allowed to print reviews of the film ahead of its release on Friday – and the few that did do so had only bad things to say about it, with one IMDB user giving it a 2 out of 10.
“This means that no one at all saw the movie before Tuesday night’s premiere. On top of that, critics and media outlets are really only seeing it for the first time tonight – Wednesday – two days before it opens on the unlucky Friday the 13th,” says the aforementioned e-zine.
Even with the embargo, this is not looking right for the film, because audiences have been taught to believe that any movie that keeps critics away ahead of release must be a flop. In other words, experience has proved this to them.
“All reviews are embargoed until Friday, but with the internet it’s hard to control. There are no reviews on Rottentomatoes.com right now, which is a little weird with 48 hours to go,” the same e-zine points out.
This comes precisely on the heels of another report that was saying that, if anything, “Eat Pray Love” should mark Roberts’ comeback at the top of the US box office and among the highest paid stars in Hollywood.
While no one’s yet saying that it won’t, buzz is starting to pick up that chances are very high that the film, an adaptation of the best-selling book of the same name, may not rise to expectations.
Follow me on Twitter @ElenaGorgan