DIRECTOR AND CO-WRITER RYAN MURPHY has made a bad film of Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert's spiritual/travel memoir, but in a way he's done her a good turn. By comparison to the protracted yet shallow movie, the not-that-deep book seems smart and almost profound. Indeed, almost every cringe-worthy moment in the film was added by Murphy and co-writer Jennifer Salt.

For those who scrupulously avoid the "memoir" and "new age" sections of their local bookstore — if they still have a local bookstore — Gilbert's mega-seller is the saga of a narcissistic New York magazine writer who takes a sabbatical (underwritten by a tidy book advance) to self-explore in Italy, India, and Bali. (For sake of alliteration, she usually says "Indonesia," but Bali has less in common with the rest of that nation than Hawaii does with Indiana.) Liz is looking for God, but also to forget a protracted divorce and the traumatic romance she fell in and out of while her lawyer was negotiating with the attorney representing her almost-ex.

In the movie, Liz is played by Julia Roberts, also one of the producers. The actress makes little effort to create a character other than her own usual screen persona, but that's OK, since the two overlap reasonably well: Roberts's trademark cackle is the rough equivalent of Gilbert's women's-magazine prose style, which undercuts every sincere moment with a cheap joke. If Roberts really can't convey the depth of her character's misery, well, neither can Gilbert. The book just describes crying jags (which are in the movie) and invokes the brand names of antidepressants (which aren't).

(For sake of brevity, future references will render not-in-the-book as NIB, and not-in-the-movie as NIM.)

The filmmakers's first mistake was to add a lengthy prologue in which we meet Liz's husband (Billy Crudup); her younger, post-split lover (James Franco); and her African-American agent/editor/publisher (Viola Davis). The last character (NIB) exists merely to show how cosmopolitan Liz is. And nothing much is established about the two guys in this section; the significant meltdowns and crackups are rendered as flashbacks, just as Gilbert did it.

Then it's off to Italy — mostly Rome — where the book's Liz consumes pasta and the Italian language, and makes new and unchallenging friends. She also is haunted by guilt and self-doubt, and admits to suffering clinical depression. Most of this is NIM, sometimes for good reason: Conveying private thoughts on screen is hard, especially in a big-budget Hollywood release staring an American box-office heavy. But Murphy, whose TV work allegedly has an edge, goes as easy as possible on dear Liz, airbrushing away her excesses. (A mad purchase of hundreds of Euros worth of lingerie is reduced to a single camisole.) And the movie's additions to Liz's Roman holiday are lame: When Liz prepares Thanksgiving dinner for her new pals, one of the group — not her, of course — forgets to defrost the turkey. This is NIB, and pure sitcom. But the Italian episode is the easiest to take, since it's essentially a travelogue of a generally agreeable country. (Berlusconi, the Mafia, and the Italian postal system? NIM.)

Film and book grow further apart in India, where Murphy and Salt excise most of Liz's internal struggles, not to mention her breakthrough encounter with the divine (or whatever). Instead, the filmmakers concentrate on Liz's relationship with Richard from Texas (Richard Jenkins), a recovering drunk and druggie who's meditating at the same ashram. The movie's portrait of the guy as brusque, corny, and gosh-darn wise is similar the one Gilbert originally drew. But this chapter of the movie builds to Richard's confession of the day he did Something Terrible (or maybe not). This would-be payoff is vulgar and dishonest — and NIB.

Unfortunately for the movie's aftertaste, the worst section comes last. This is ironic, since Gilbert's account of four months in Bali is the book's highlight — if only because it comes closest to acknowledging the real world. Perhaps because her depression has lifted, the author actually notices the lives of people around her. Gilbert has the bestest time on the island, finding the thing she craves even more than God: an urbane new boyfriend (Javier Bardem). But she acknowledges that the Balinese aren't enjoying life quite so much. They're often poor and — especially if they're women — oppressed. Gilbert even allots a whole paragraph to a few cliché-busting highlights of Adrian Vickers's Bali: A Paradise Created, a book whose clotted prose should be required reading for every visitor to "the island of the gods."

Ryan and Salt junk all of this. Aside from a few generic rice-paddy shots, their Bali could have been photographed in Florida or Costa Rica, with a handful of imported Javanese actors. (The movie excludes Balinese performers from any significant roles.) Gilbert largely ignores a lot of what draws most visitors to Bali, including its music, dance, art, and crypto-Hindu religious traditions. But at least she acknowledges that the traffic is diabolical. The movie makers turn the genuine peril of road travel in Bali into another cute moment, a NIB encounter where Jeep-driving Felipe (Bardem) knocks Liz off her bicycle. (Why not? The same setup was so adorable in Ridley Scott's A New Year). And the biggest conflict in Gilbert's telling of her Bali sojourn, a boon for a impoverished divorcée and her three young daughters that almost ended badly, becomes a feel-good NIB aside that's drained of all discord. Upholding the tourist-brochure hype that the island is "peaceful," Murphy presents a Bali is neither Gilbert's nor the actual one.

Movies deviate from books all the time, of course. One reason for that is to avoid the sort of interior monologues that require voiceover narration. But Eat Pray Love has lots of narration, most of it offering idle commentary that could have been incorporated into dialogue — or dumped altogether. The book works, to the extent it does, because it contrasts Liz's obvious jokes and glib observations with attempts to get at something transcendent. The movie excises the latter pursuit, leaving almost nothing but scenery, whether architectural, natural, or human. Without some background on the real Gilbert's quest, it's hard to imagine why the cinematic Liz even goes to India and Bali. Why not just stay in Italy, luxuriating in gelato, lingerie, and brown-eyed boys, and retitle the thing Eat Shop Love?

EAT PRAY LOVE — 2010, 133 min; showing at the Avalon and every multiplex between here and Denpasar.