Day Sixteen: Julie & Julia

JULIE & JULIA

Starring:
-Meryl Streep
-Amy Adams
-Stanley Tucci

Directed By: Nora Ephron

Screenplay Credits: Nora Ephron

MPAA Rating: PG-13 – Brief strong language and some sensuality


First of all, let me go on record as saying that Meryl Streep does the infamous Julia Child voice insanely well. This is a big admittance for me, as I have never been a big Streep fan. Kramer vs. Kramer is annoying, that one film she made with Anne Hathaway was just pointless, and Mamma Mia made me want to drown puppies (not really, I’m actually a hardcore fan of puppies). Anyway, I enjoyed her performance in this film.

Julie Powell is nearly thirty and all bummed because she talks to the families of 9/11 victims all day and is an unsuccessful writer. Her husband Eric – whom she calls a saint and let me tell you, he would have to be in order to put up with all her psycho mood swings, just saying – encourages her to start a blog to give her a hobby and help her find herself. He signs her up and she begins an impossible challenge: cooking her way through all the recipes in Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”

Meanwhile, many, many years ago, Julia and her husband Paul have moved to France because he works for the government and is bald, but we’re not going to hold either of those things against him. Julia loves France, but she’s not like all the other wives. She needs something to do besides stand around and be tall. She considered hat making classes and bridge lessons before finally settling on attending cooking school.

The film flips back and forth between Julie and Julia’s stories, and is far more interesting and effective than Powell’s book – and possibly even her blog- could have ever been. I think that when Powell got her book deal, she wanted to throw in everything but the kitchen sink to impress everybody with her mad Harper Lee skills. She failed. Instead of focusing strictly on the blog and how it impacted her life, she went off chasing all kinds of non-food related rabbits, detailing her best friend’s infidelity, and whining about her health problems. Boo hoo lady, tell us about the food.

Okay, okay, back to the movie review.

Thanks to her special Hermann Munster shoes, Streep towers head and shoulders over the rest of the cast, repeatedly threatening to squash the life right out of poor Stanely Tucci should she fall. For those of us cynical people who enjoy poking fun at any and everyone, there’s a brief shout-out to Dan Ackroyd’s Saturday Night Live version of Julia, “Damn! I just cut the hell out of my finger!”

And, maybe it’s just me, but I can’t decide whether Adams’ haircut makes her look more like a lesbian or a pixie. Either way, it isn’t very flattering.

You know, I remember watching The French Chef on TV when I was a kid. It used to come on Public Television right before Bob Ross and his “happy little clouds.” Julia Child was unpredictable and hilarious in her kitchen. Not in a Three Stooges kind of way, but still really funny. So I went into this film with fairly high standards and, for the most part, they were met.

One last thing, I had totally forgotten about pop beads until seeing this movie. I used to have a big bag of them. Wonder where they are?

FINAL GRADE: B+

Off in search of pop beads,

M.