Review: Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia

OPENING: 08/07/2009

STUDIO: Columbia Pictures

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

SOUNDTRACK:

The Charge
Passion. Ambition. Butter. Do You Have What It Takes?

Opening Statement
The Summer Counter-Programming Meryl Streep Film is becoming an annual event. The previous installments have included The Devil Wears Prada, Evening, and Mamma Mia! Streep was magnificent in all three, but the films themselves were disappointingly middling. Sadly, this story is repeated once again in Nora Ephron’s hit-and-miss biopic Julie & Julia.

Facts of the Case
The "Julia" of the title is the famous chef Julia Child (Streep), who made the art of French cooking accessible to the average American housewife and won the hearts of millions through her charming television program. The film spotlights a period of Julia’s life that could be regarded as a major turning point. The second World War had concluded, she and her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci, The Terminal) had settled down in France (he was a representative of the American government working in Paris), and Julia was looking for something to do with her life. She decided upon cooking, found great joy in learning the many nuances of the profession, and then… well, I’ll let the film provide the details.

The "Julie" of the title is Julie Powell (Amy Adams, Enchanted), a 21st Century New York woman stuck in a very unpleasant job working for an insurance company. She is married to a man named Eric (Chris Messina, Vicky Cristina Barcelona), lives above a pizza parlor, and is looking for something to do with her life. She too decides to try cooking and is determined to go through Julia Child’s entire cookbook (all 524 recipes) in just one year. Every day, she will blog her experiences, keeping readers posted as to how well her project is going. Alas, the endeavor proves to be more challenging than she anticipated, taking its toll on her life and marriage.

The Evidence
Ephron takes these two stories and weaves them together… well, not seamlessly, but does so by constantly drawing parallels between the lives of these two women. Julie and Julia never meet, but Ephron attempts to suggest they were kindred spirits, each an equally fascinating individual in her own way. She may be correct in assuming Julie and Julia had some kind of profound connection, Julie is simply not as interesting.

There are a variety of possibilities as to why this is so. Julie’s life isn’t as intriguing or colorful as Julia’s, and the stale Queens (circa 2002) setting is far less cinematic than Paris in the 1950s. Watching someone cook and blog is not as exciting as watching someone attempt to break new ground in the world of culinary arts. Julie’s story also suffers from an overload of tedious life lesson tripe (of the, "Here’s what Julia unintentionally taught me today," variety) and a series of relationship developments that are agonizingly overworked cinema conventions. While these elements don’t do Julie any favors, the biggest problem seems to be that Amy Adams (as good as she is) isn’t half as interesting as Meryl Streep. Adams is stuck playing a thoroughly ordinary woman — a character constantly upset, irritated, depressed, and discouraged about a wide variety of things — and "dreary" isn’t a shade that suits Adams very well.

I might have liked her just fine, if the film was not constantly comparing her to the incomparable Streep, who gives us a spot-on Julia Child. Of course she does. Is there anything this woman cannot do? At this point, someone could cast her as former President Jimmy Carter and I wouldn’t blink. The screen lights up whenever she appears, as her wobbling, warbling Julia cheerfully makes merely average material genuinely exceptional. As with most of her performances, Streep convinces us she is Child, rather than doing a mere imitation. Just the other day I re-watched her performance as the frosty nun in Doubt (which also featured Adams), and it is almost unfathomable to believe this is the same person. Streep is a rare exception to the restrictive rules of Hollywood: She’s a woman who turned 60 years old this year and is still capable of bringing in audiences on star power alone.

However, Streep does not carry her portion of the film by herself. Her supporting cast is quite solid, particularly Stanley Tucci as her loving husband. Tucci doesn’t have much to do, but he gets a lot of mileage out of reaction shots that seem ten percent amused, ten percent exasperated, and eighty percent lovestruck with this marvelous woman he has married. Special mention should also be made of Jane Lynch, who gives us ten very entertaining minutes as Julia’s energetic sister. On the flip side, Adams is dealing with a series of bores. Messina is incredibly uninteresting, as her patient-but-not-too-patient husband, and her friends all feel like sub-par stereotypes from Sex and the City.

Closing Statement
Julie & Julia is a delightful film and a tiresome film rolled into one. It was a novel approach but, now that we’ve had an opportunity to see the finished product, it seems Ephron would have been far better served by telling Julia’s story and leaving Julie’s to the Hallmark Channel. Ah, well. Better luck next summer, Ms. Streep.

The Verdict
6/10

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