Movie Review - Julie & Julia

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Based on a true story, Julie (Amy Adams) is a wannabe writer who, on a whim, decides to cook every recipe in Julia Childs’ (Meryl Streep) legendary cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Julie decides to set a deadline for herself of one year and recount her exploits on her blog.  The task is formidable when you realize that the book in question features 524 recipes.  Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I don’t really like food.  Ok, that’s not true.  I mean, not that you can tell on the internet, but I’m fat.  So clearly I like food.  Perhaps a better way to phrase it would be, “I don’t like cuisine.”  When it comes to the culinary arts, I’m about as adventurous as a 5-year old.  I’m strictly meat and potatoes.  I haven’t eaten a vegetable since the Regan administration.  I think you get my point.  So going to see a movie like Julie & Julia poses something of a challenge.  Movies like this love to use food as a metaphor for love and live and spiritual awakening.  But unless or until someone makes a film dedicated to beef jerky and Diet Pepsi Vanilla, all that is lost on me.

Written and directed by Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally..., Sleepless in Seattle), the film turns out to be a pleasant surprise.  Split into two sections (Julie’s part and Julia’s part…duh), it blithely toggles between the two.  Equal time is given to both Julie’s blogging adventures and Julia’s attempts to learn French cuisine and later, publish a cookbook on the subject.  Adams is sprightly as Julie with her page-boy hair cut and frumpy fashions.  She’s mired in her job as a low level bureaucrat processing 9/11 insurance claims.  Her blog gives her an unexpected revitalization.

Streep gives a spot on performance as Julia Child.  Of course, praising a Meryl Streep performance is like telling someone that water is wet, but she nails both the physical mannerisms of Child and her high pitched sing-songy voice…for good and ill.  Child has a, shall we say, unique voice.  This, combined with her large frame (Child was 6 foot 2 inches), has always created an incongruous image; as if somehow Bea Arthur and Charlotte Rae had managed to have a baby.  Though I enjoyed the Julie portions of the film, I enjoyed the Julia portions more.  However Julie quickly became respite from the vocal intonations of Child/Streep.  As interesting as Child turns out to be, I don’t know that I could have handled an entire film of that voice.  The film strikes a delicate balance between the two entirely separate stories.

Ephron’s script deftly and subtly touches on the problems that Child faced due to her non-traditional looks.  We see her drawing looks from passers-by and learn that she was a virgin until she married at the age of 40.  However, we also a see a woman who loved life and refused to be encumbered by her differences.  She had a loving husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), who clearly found her sexually attractive.  Early in the film she tells her husband, “What would I have done if you hadn’t fallen in love with me.”  It’s a revealing line of dialog that conveys so many messages.  We instantly know that she’s painfully aware of her differences and that she feels he’s saved her from a life alone.  But it also communicates that she knows his love is not derived from pity or a lack of options on his part.  Streep’s reading imbues the line with a wistful sense of melancholy yet no sense of self-pity.  It’s a wonderful little moment that few, if any, actresses besides Streep could have conveyed.

The film is far from perfect.  As the movie attempts to contrast the two writers, it falters.  It’s difficult to compare the two women.  Child’s feat was Herculean.  She composed an encyclopedic book of never-before-compiled French recipes.  She translated those recipes from French to English.  She converted all the measurements from metric to the American customary system.  She labored for years across three countries to create a 734-page, 524 recipe opus that would become an international best-seller which is still in print to this day and in the process became the world’s first “celebrity chef.”

Julie blogged.

Regardless of how clever the blog’s gimmick might be, the level of achievement just isn’t comparable.

Also problematic, late in the film Julie and her husband Eric (Chris Messina) have a falling out that feels like a screenwriter’s concoction; existing solely for the purpose of conflict in a film that heretofore was devoid of it.

Oh, and the chewing.  My God, the chewing!  Perhaps it’s merely a personal pet-peeve but why do films equate enjoyment of a good meal with sloppy, noisy eating.  I almost couldn’t make it through the first half-an-hour after being subjected to all the chomping and slurping.  Thankfully it wasn’t a reoccurring theme.

However, the film is interesting and has a genuine sweetness to it that we rarely get from Hollywood (especially in the summer).  It has strong performances from its four leads, plus a nice supporting effort from Mary Lynn Rajskub as Julie’s friend Sara.  And it’s certainly refreshing to find a film aimed at women that is about something more than a working gal learning how to land a man.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Big Night and 1 being Emeril, Julie & Julia gets a 7.

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