Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Movie Review: Julie & Julia

I saw a sneak preview of Julie & Julia today. I didn't know Julie Powell's story at all, but this is based on her book Julie and Julia, 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. She blogged her experience trying to cook all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. The blog became popular and then got a story in the New York TImes which resulted in a book deal. It's more a year of self-discovery rather than a cooking lesson but it was quite fun.

This is a return to form for writer-director Nora Ephron. The less said about Bewitched the better. While not quite as good as Sleepless in Seattle it's better than You've Got Mail. I laughed many times and almost cried once, though I no longer remember at what.

The film starts by saying it's based on two true stories. It spends half time time telling Julia Child's story of arriving in Paris in the 40s and learning to cook French food at Cordon Bleu and then becoming a teacher and writing the book with her partners. There are various struggles as she finds what interests her, overcomes prejudice against Americans at cooking school and struggles to find a publisher. Her husband Paul was a diplomat and had to deal with a McCarthy era investigation. This was almost completely unrelated to anything else in the film, but explained their moving around and provided some opportunity to show their relationship.

The other story is Julie's. She works in a self-described soul-sucking dead-end job answering phones for an organization helping rebuild lower Manhattan after 9/11. This sounded less soul-sucking than many jobs I could imagine but she was the standard powerless customer service rep that has to listen to people complain to her all day long. She and her husband move to a new 900 square foot apartment above a pizzeria in Queens. She's previously written half a novel but has a problem finishing things; hence her one year goal to finish Child's book. The stress of doing that in a tiny kitchen while dealing with work and her husband yields a surprisingly engaging story.

Meryl Streep completely nails Julia Child. Whenever I thought it was too much of a caricature, I had to remind myself that no, no it wasn't. That was how Julia talked and acted. The film makes a few mentions of her 6'2" height but I only caught the use of one obvious Lord of the Rings-type miniature technique.

Early on Amy Adams had a couple of Enchanted moments that worried me, but she then fell well into place as a modern day adorable Meg Ryan in a Nora Ephron film. Based on the bits of the blog I've read they cleaned up her New Yorker language. At one point she wonders if she's used the f-word too much in her blog which is odd to think of her typing since she barely cursed at all in the film.

Stanley Tucci as Paul Child reminded me of Gene Kelly in An American in Paris even though he never wears the famous stripped shirt. Chris Messina is Julie's husband Eric and isn't as interesting as the other leads. The character is a little underwritten and he's no Tom Hanks.

Julie Child's life is rich enough for a dedicated biography. The story of Julie's blog probably isn't but the two work well together. The film worked best when it concentrated on the cooking. While there's some food porn, there's not nearly as much as Big Night or Eat Drink Man Woman.

I wondered if those under 30 will recognize the clip of Dan Aykroyd's classic SNL skit. Here's the whole thing for a refresher.

It opens August 7th and I think will be one of the better films of the year. There should probably be a warning for vegetarians as there are several scenes of cooking raw meat, poultry and the killing of inevitably delicious crustaceans.

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