Julie & Julia

Director: Nora Ephron

Writers: Nora Ephron, Julie Powell (book “Julie & Julia”), Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme (book “My Life in France”)

Cast: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Chris Messina, Stanley Tucci

If it’s hard to sympathize with selfishness, it’s impossible to sympathize with Julie Powell.  The always affable Amy Adams plays Julie who’s half of the duo comprising Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia.  The unarguably less interesting half has to do with Julie, an abused call-taker for an insurance company who can’t seem to find her vision.  In response she undertakes the promise of the touchstone cookbook, Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  While blogging about her experience Julie cooks her way through 524 recipes in 365 days.  To do what?  Find what?  I don’t know, maybe just to accomplish something. 

National treasure Meryl Streep embodies the contagiously giddy Julia Child; a 6′2” American woman, planted in Paris, bored of Bridge, who wants nothing more than to become a great chef.  Streep’s turn as Child could be compared to Sean Penn’s in 2008’s “Milk” in relation to the level of craft.  The difference is she may not win and it’s the screenplay’s fault.  While her half of the film is certainly more energetic, it’s in a way just as bland.  We know that Julia’s book was published so the story can’t be about that and yet it is.  It doesn’t accentuate the small parts of her life; or even the more interesting.  Had the movie been about her journey to break into a profession and a world dominated by men I would have been hooked and yet it wasn’t.  The film allows everything to be carried by such a broad stroke that there’s nothing to see that we couldn’t read on Wikipedia.    

The husbands of the two ladies, one played by Chris Messina, the other Stanley Tucci, are both saints in their own right.  Each is impossibly taken by their wives singular vision.  Tucci never truly breaks his angelic mold he really only exists to say “good job”, “well done”, and to eat.  Messina virtually the same, except a few times he does break and storm out of the apartment but he always comes back with a forgiving glance and an empty stomach.  

For a movie about a master chef it knows surprisingly little about food.  No one ever says anything intelligent about food besides “that was good” and “mmmmmmm”.  It’s only there as a tangible mission.  Julia Child was in love with the art of cooking.  The beauty of craft behind what makes food so delicious.  The movie never captures that craft, that art, we only get what’s on the table and not the story behind it.  

In the end the movie fails.  Simply because Julie Powell’s half of the film is boring, pretentious, and selfish.  Whether the actual Julie was like this or not, the character Julie cares only for herself.  She believes her husband’s world revolves around her mission to cook her way through Child’s book.  She subjects him to meltdown after meltdown and as great as food is, it can’t say everything.  

To put it mildly, Julia Child was a woman who barged her way into a man’s profession, became a master chef despite her setbacks, taught “servantless” Americans how to cook, became a TV superstar, and wrote the culinary bible.  Julie Powell read her book.

2 1/2 stars out of 4

Tyler