Julie and Julia Mini Review

I don't like doing this, but due to technical problems with Blogger and other things, I am unable to provide a full review of Julie and Julia. It's a shame, too, because I greatly enjoyed this film.

Writer-director Nora Ephron was once reliable, but due to recent flops like Lucky Numbers and Bewitched, I approached this movie with caution. Fortunately, this turned out to be her strongest film in years. Meryl Streep and Amy Adams (their second film together in less than a year) may not share any screen time together, but they both give wonderful individual performances. Streep's potrayal of famed chef, Julia Child, is amazing not just for how perfectly she captures everything about the larger than life TV chef, but because she manages to make her so human and relatable. I can easily picture Julia Child coming across as a caricature or merely an imitation of her unforgettable voice, but Streep goes deeper than that, and makes her a three dimensional character.

Adams has a little less to work with as Julie, a frustrated woman in 2002 who is bored with her job, and decides to write a blog where she goes through every recipee in Julia's Child cook book during the course of a year. Nonetheless, her performance captures our attention, just like everything Adams has done. She's sweet and immediately likable, but flawed, which is shown as her blog begins to run her life at home with her husband. The movie cuts back and forth to two different time periods, focusing on each individual woman's life, and finding parallels. Some of these may be examples of Ephron's screenplay stretching to find similarities, but it's never distracting, and the performances keep us riveted throughout.

This is a perfect movie for the summer, as it's light and not very deep, but still manages to be entertaining throughout. It certainly helps that the movie is frequently very funny. There may be a lack of tension in the film, but I strangely didn't mind. The movie is likable, and the characters are interesting enough to hold our interest.

Full reviews to return on Friday, provided Blogger is working right.

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