'Eat, Pray, Love, Scam' merchandise fleeces soul searchers

You can't buy your way out of unhappiness, Julia Roberts. While Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat, Pray, Love tells readers that it's better to look within for spiritual succor, the movie's maker, Sony Pictures, is flatly contradicting her by unleashing a tsunami of merchandise that suggests we find inner peace through purchasing. The movie's target audience, unfulfilled women, are proving just unfulfilled enough to fall for it.

In a piece titled "Eat, Pray, Zilch," the New York Post laments over an unfortunate bandwagon effect stemming from the Eat, Pray, Love bestseller bonfire -- which was fanned by Oprah Winfrey and is now fully ablaze through an over-hyped movie, opening this weekend. The newspaper suggests the book, and now the movie, shortchange Americans by teaching them that laying out some cash for a movie-themed chair or a yoga retreat might be enough to cure what ails them.