Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia (2009)

Director: Nora Ephron

Writers: Nora Ephron (screenplay), Julie Powell

Stars: Amy Adams, Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina

I would like to start out by saying that I went into this movie with high expectations, after just seeing Doubt. Its Amy Adams and Meryl Streeps first chance to perform together on the silver screen, and it created magic. It was subtle, moody, intriguing, dynamic, original, emotional, challenging, and brilliantly acted. Julie & Julia is not Doubt. It is a dreary, dull, monotonous, poorly acted movie with glimpses of brilliance. Even the great Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci can not save this bomb from falling into audience laps.

The movie is based of the book Julie & Julia, it follows Julie, a 30ish woman who works in a dead end job, lives in a run down apartment, has not completed a thing in her life, and her only saving grace is her love for food. So, with the encouragement of her husband Eric (Chris Messina) she decides to go thru Julia Childs' cook book the Joy of French Cooking and create all the recipes in one year’s time. Simultaneously throughout Julie’s story we see a biographical depiction of the life of Julia Childs (Meryl Streep) before she was a star, how she got her start with cooking, and her insatiable love of butter.  

Meryl Streep keeps here title as the best female actress of this generation. She embodies Julia Childs with her attention to detail and delivery being top notch. It can be difficult enough to portray a fictional character effectively, but when it comes to portraying a historical figure that had the personality and voice of Julia Childs the stakes are at there highest. Streep nails it and deserved her Oscar nomination for this role.The portrayal between Julia Childs and her husband (Stanley Tucci) are heart felt and feel genuine as well. These performances should not be missed.

The rest of the movie is a train wreck. Now I love Amy Adams, but she comes off as just a whiny, emotional disaster. It became difficult to watch her make the “My life is so hard” face during every scene. Her infatuation with Julia Childs is portrayed as smug at times and I feel the character is a bit to generic for the genre.   

Now Chris Messina, who plays Julie’s husband, is one of my most hated characters of all time. I know that a big part of this film is eating food, but the way he acts it out just made me want to walk out. Chris Messina shovels food into his orifice like a 3 month old that can not quite seem to find his mouth. If you truly savor something, you take it in bit by bit, not try to shove the entire meal into your mouth. 

Julie & Julia is half a fantastic bio pick that deserves all the credit in the world, and half sub-par romantic comedy that has a bunch of characters that you just do not like. I am going to say you should still see this movie, but skip the Julie parts.

-Crimson R.