Julie & Julia (Movie Review)

Movie Review
Julie and Julia
2009
Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams
Directed by: Nora Ephron

Movies that seem to have split personalities rarely are any good. But usually this "two-movies-in-one" problem is unintentional and are examples of bad filmmaking. Julie & Julia is like watching two movies in one but that’s how Nora Ephron intended. It’s the story about Chef Julia Child and a blogger who created a site based on her experiences cooking her way through Child’s cookbook The Art of French Cooking. The movie is presented through the lives of the two women. The problem is that one story is really interesting and entertaining and the other story is annoying and feels time consuming.

Julie Powell (Adams) lives in a cramped apartment in New York City with her husband Eric (Chris Messina). While Julie had a lot of potential during her academic years, she had stumbled along the way and works in a call centre while her friends have become incredibly successful (and to a certain extent feel as if Julie is now their loser friend). Looking for an outlet to express herself, she thinks about two things she really enjoys: eating and writing. She comes up with an idea that she’ll write a blog about her journey cooking through Julia Child’s famous cookbook, The Art of French Cooking. Her goal is to cook all 500+ recipes within 365 days. What starts off as a kooky project becomes a serious part of Julie’s life as she begins to get a huge following on the Internet. It’s not all perfect as Julie’s pursuit of her end goal becomes draining on her marriage and her job.

Julia Child (Streep) moves to France with her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci). Paul works for the American government. While she enjoys life in France, she quickly gets bored playing homemaker and wants to do something with her life. Her love of food inspires her to try becoming a chef and write a cookbook on French cuisine for Americans (since all the books on the subject are only in French). Culinary schools like The Cordon Bleu are generally exclusively male but Julia breaks the mold and gets her foot in the door. After graduating from the prestigious Cordon Bleu, Julia sets forth on compiling the cookbook with collaborators Simone Beck (Linda Emond) and Louisette Berthoille (Helen Carey). As the book faces constant rejection from their publisher and seeing her husband suffer criticism from the American government to the point where they investigate to see if the couple are Communists, Julia wonders if she’ll ever achieve her goal of being a staple in American and French cuisine.

This really does feel like a tale of two movies. The way the movie is presented has it that the story flows back and forth between the Julie Powell and Julia Child narratives. Usually they cut to each other’s story when one story approaches a common variable to both stories; like a particular recipe or a theme such as rejection. It works very well and for the most part is seamless. The way the story is told it shows that despite the generation gap, these two women have similar problems. It’s as if both are taking a journey down the same path to a certain extent.

The biggest problem for the movie though is that one story is much stronger than the other. The story of Julia Child is entertaining, inspiring, and charming. The story of Julie Powell is annoying, superficial, and dull. It has more to do with the main characters themselves than the narratives. Julia Child is charismatic and motherly. Meryl Streep did a phenomenal job at playing the role to give so much life to the character of the famous chef. Julie Powell is whiny and frustrated. Amy Adams looked uninspired playing the role and seemed to be going through the motions more than anything else. Usually, she puts on a better performance but this one was void of any desirable qualities and it didn’t help the character or her half of the movie. Perhaps she played the role perfectly and it was the fault of the writing and/or directing. Either way, the Julie Powell half of the movie feels like a dud being paired with the Julia Child story.

The writing was a big problem for the movie. While it didn’t affect the Julia Child storyline all that much, it did hurt the Julie Powell one quite a bit. The marital problems between Julie and Eric seem kind of flaky and feel like a lame way to try and push the movie into the genre of romantic comedy. It’s implemented poorly and gives the impression that the story arc isn’t progressing organically. There are also some things that are left up in the air like a message sent to Julie Powell from Julia Child (who, in the storyline of the movie is still alive) that isn’t resolved before the credits roll. It seems very hastily put together.

If Julie & Julia was only about Julia Child, it would have made for a much better movie. Strapped with the Julie Powell story, it’s a mediocre film. The shining star is Streep (and to a lesser extent Tucci). Her time on screen makes up for the time when she’s not on the screen. The other part of the film isn’t atrociously bad but it tries too much to set itself up as a romantic comedy that also tries to score some sympathy points by throwing references to the World Trade Center attacks into the storyline. The problem is that it’s not funny and sometimes shameful. Watch for the Julia Child story, power nap through the rest.

☆☆☆