Julie & Julia (2009)

What I expected:

Julie & Julia had me excited on many levels: I love Meryl Streep. She has never made a bad movie, and can do anything. I enjoy Amy Adams, especially as she expands her range. I love food and cooking, and I blog, so the idea of a blogger cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook and then writing about it appealed to me. I expected this to be a fun, charming film filled with many ingredients that I love.

What I got:

Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, a frustrated public servant who hates her life. The only things she really loves are her husband (Chris Messina – who I could have done without seeing eat – ever! Ew!) and cooking. Together they come up with the idea that she should cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. She starts a blog about the effort and writes about her trials and tribulations. Which becomes very popular and ultimately becomes the book on which the movie is based.

The other story thread is about Julia Child’s love of food, life and how she became a chef at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and ended up authoring the first book on French cooking for Americans. These two storylines, that are set some 40  years apart, are deftly woven together into a charming homage to the joy that cooking brings to life. The Child story is the more charming of the two, but it would not have been strong enough by itself and I really enjoyed the juxtaposition.

Meryl Streep is wonderful as Child. She captures her delightful appetite for life so convincingly that you forget you are not watching the real Julia Child. Stanley Tucci plays her husband, Paul, and together they portray a truly charming couple, that have obvious and deep love for each other – and really enjoy making love. I know! Seriously, I bet you never thought of Julia Child in that way before!? And again “Ew”! Not to the sex, but to Tucci’s pelt. I did not need to see him that naked!

They Childs are portrayed as wonderful people, with no flaws, while Julie Powell and her husband by contrast fight; are struggling to get by; and live in near squalor. The idea of the film is how similar the lives are – just separated by time, space and technology. Julie & Julia are both looking for something to do, they both love to cook, and they both end up writing about it, albeit in very different ways.

The one beef I have with how perfect the Child’s are made out to be, is a that I don’t doubt that Julia was a wonderful person, but by building her up this much, it is hard to then believe that she would refuse to meet Julie and that she wouldn’t like what Julie was doing. It makes no sense. That is not the Julia you have just watched for two hours!

Julie & Julia is truly sweet. It is so charming, light and fluffy that you can’t help but feel good when you are done watching. It is one of my new favorite feel-good movies of all time.

Niels Hansen is the co-owner of Hansen Creative Services, a graphic design firm near Columbus, Ohio which specializes in employee communications and small business marketing.

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