“Julie & Julia” is actually two movies in one. The first is the story of famed chef Julia Child. The other is the story of blogger Julie Powell.
Much like a parent who makes a child eat his or her vegetables before getting dessert, writer-director Nora Ephron makes moviegoers sit through the Powell portions in order to savor the Child portions.
Not that it’s altogether unpleasant trade-off. Powell’s story isn’t exactly liver and onions. It’s more like, say, meatloaf — OK, but nothing to get too excited about.
The allure of the film, though, unquestionably resides with Child, brilliantly portrayed in all her teetering, warble-voiced splendor by Meryl Streep.
“Julie & Julia” begins with Child and her diplomat-husband Paul (the ever-solid Stanley Tucci) moving to Paris in 1949. It’s in the City of Light that Child experiences a culinary revelation, prompting her to enroll in the city’s famous Le Cordon Bleu cooking school.
Powell’s story, which takes place a half-century later, is full of parallels. Both Child and Powell had government jobs. Both were searching for something meaningful to do with their lives. Both found salvation in cooking.
For Powell (Amy Adams, pictured at right), the result was a popular blog, “The Julie/Julia Project,” in which the Queens, N.Y., resident attempted to cook all 524 recipes in Child’s landmark “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in one year.
(The two women’s lives never intersect. Powell, who began her blog in 2002, never met Child, who died in 2004.)
Ephron, whose chick-flick pedigree includes “When Harry Met Sally …” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” deftly interweaves the two women’s stories into 123 minutes, but fails to capture the humor and soul of Powell’s writing, leaving a depressing after-taste with her half of the tale.
Streep, on the other hand, channels all the vivaciousness and swagger of the 6-foot-2 Child, even displaying a bawdiness that occasionally stretches the film’s PG-13 rating.
And to her credit, Ephron does a masterful job of portraying the passionate relationship between Child and her husband, as well as the frustration of the chef’s decade-long struggle to publish her groundbreaking cookbook.
By the time “Julie & Julia” ends — with the publication of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in 1961 — you’ve pretty much had your fill of Powell’s story.
But you sure wish you could have another helping of dessert.
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To anyone who has a desires to cook or bake and share their true love through their own creations, will no doubt love this movie. I found a connection with each character. This was simply one of the most light hearted and well needed movies for this time of my life and our times. Bon Apetit!