Salt Lake Tribune Review
If you're presented a meal where one course is simply divine and the other is just OK, you're going to rhapsodize about the excellent dish and ignore -- and possibly forgive -- the lesser fare.
So it is with the two movies playing in parallel in "Julie & Julia" -- one is exquisite and tasty, the other palatable but bland.
The stories that intertwine in director
Nora Ephron's tale involve two women more than 50 years apart. In 1949, Julia Child (
Meryl Streep) and her husband, Paul (
Stanley Tucci), have just moved to Paris, where he has a diplomatic posting and she is looking around for a job or hobby that will engage her. In 2002,
Julie Powell (
Amy Adams) is a midlevel bureaucrat in the Manhattan agency handling the recovery from the World Trade Center's destruction and bemoaning to her husband, Eric (
Chris Messina), that she needs a creative outlet.
For both, the answer comes in cooking, and in writing about cooking.
Child challenges the establishment to enter the Cordon Bleu cooking school -- and later, to co-author a cookbook to demystify French cuisine for American women. Powell takes her trusty copy of Child's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking , and vows to prepare all 524 recipes in it in one year, and to write a blog about her experiences.
As Ephron tells the stories (adapting Powell's book and a memoir of Child's published after her death in 2004 by her nephew, Alex Prud'homme), Child's is by far the more compelling. Child battled chauvinism (in the country that invented it) and French nationalist pride, not to mention a cookbook industry that believed the only necessary kitchen utensil was a can opener. Powell's main dilemmas are self-inflicted -- either trying to compare herself to her status-driven friends or having a meltdown when the boeuf bourguignon overcooks.
Child's story also has a more interesting husband. Paul Child, sublimely played by Tucci (who worked with Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada"), brings out the best in Julia -- and together they share passion for life and each other. (You never thought of Julia Child having a rambunctious sex life, but you will after seeing this.) As Powell's husband, Eric, Messina does his best with the film's most underwritten figure, a calm center around which Adams' performance spins.
But the main reason the Child half of "Julie & Julia" soars is that Streep so fully inhabits the woman. Streep not only mimics the lilt of Child's sing-song voice, but also captures the joie de vivre with which Child attacked obstacles. Streep even manages, through some clever set design and camera tricks, to fill Child's imposing 6-foot-2 frame.
I once attended a live tribute to Streep, in which the critic Roger Ebert noted that the actress had paradoxically played so many tragic characters when in real life she was one of the most cheerful and merry people ever to act on film. With Julia Child,
Meryl Streep may have finally found a character as exuberantly happy as she is. The end product is, not surprisingly, magnifique!
-- Sean P. Means
Meryl + Stanley = Magic
Submitted by: tivogirl
I could have watched Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci just play off one another for six hours! They were both just fantastic, effortless and charming. Their chemistry was incredible! The other half of the story, with Julie the more recent blogger, was just okay. Amy Adams is always adorable and entertaining, but her story just paled in comparison. I wish they'd have just made the Julia Child movie as I wanted to learn more about her amazing life!
Definitely worth seeing, and not necessarily just a chick flick. My husband enjoyed it quite a lot. Don't be surprised if some acting Oscar nods come out of this one.
Odd
Submitted by: shelley_utahjazzfan
There was too much gratitous Republican bashing but I guess you get that from someone who thinks Queens is beautiful. You would probably enjoy this movie more if you enjoyed cooking...which I don't. The acting was great, by both women. I loved both super supporting husbands.
The rundown: The lives of Julia Child (
Meryl Streep) and a Child-following blogger (
Amy Adams) are intertwined, but Streep's joyous performance outshines everything else. 123 minutes. (SPM)
Synopsis: Nora Ephron adapts
Julie Powell's autobiographical book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen with this Columbia Pictures production starring
Amy Adams as an amateur chef who decides to cook every recipe in a cookbook from acclaimed celebrity chef Julia Child (played by
Meryl Streep) in order to chronicle it in a blog over the course of a year. Streep's Devil Wears Prada co-star
Stanley Tucci re-teams with the actress as Child's husband.~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide
Enjoyable, if not fluffy. What is not in dispute, however, is Meryl Streep's acting. There were times in this film I was lost in her performance. For Streep's turn alone this film is worth seeing. [ Report Abuse ]