Movie Notes: Julie & Julia
= 3 stars
Starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci
Directed by Nora Ephron
Synopsis
Bored with her day job, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) starts a blog (which still exists) documenting her experience cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s cook book Mastering The Art Of French Cooking. The film also shows how Julia Child (Meryl Streep) began writing said cookbook while living in Paris.
The Good
- Streep (as expected) is solid as she wholly inhabits the nutty (and extremely tall) Julia Child. Streep looks like she’s having a ball, and plays Child with a humanizing warmth that never comes across as a caricature. Adams is also tops, playing blogger Julie with a brewing middle-age disappointment, watching ambition slip away. Her range of emotion ultimately proves rather endearing. After this and Doubt, I could watch either working at McDonalds.
- Some chuckles from Julie’s blogging experience: initially, mom is her only reader, familiar questions about what kind of anti-social lives her dedicated readers live, and her husband eventually points out the narcissism inherent to blogging.
- Some amusement in parallel plot lines containing Julie the frustrated blogger and Julia the frustrated cook, and their patient husbands.
The Bad
- Expected more love of food. I left the theater hungry after Ratatouille’s CGI confections, and other food films (Big Night, Mostly Martha) incited far more hunger pangs. Truly head-scratching: instead of worship, the movie often uses food as comic relief (rebelling lobsters, barfy aspic, a pile of onions). Ephron also remains more fascinated by women’s peculiar interactions (special handshakes, you’re a bitch) than any of Child’s dishes in either plot thread. More chick flick than chicken fillets.
- Not enough conflict for my taste. Obviously, Child’s book was ultimately published, and when mopey husband leaves Julie, you know he’s honor bound to movie convention to return. As a result the movie sags in the middle and limps to an obvious conclusion — like pasta slung against a wall.
Conclusion
Despite the talents of Streep and Adams, I feel Ephron and the material failed them. Instead of a hearty boeuf bourguignon, Julie & Julia was a wafer-thin trifle, leaving me hungry a few hours later. And “cute but ultimately inconsequential” equals rental material.
IMDB: Julie & Julia
Wikipedia: Julie & Julia
Rotten Tomatoes: Julie & Julia