Appetizing Julie & Julia a Bit Half-Baked
Julie Powell (Amy Adams) feels like her life is headed nowhere. The self-described writer is stuck watching her friends achieve success while she works a dead-end job, and other than loving to cook she can’t think of a darn thing she wants to do with her life.
Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in Sony Pictures' Julie & Julia
At the urging of her husband Eric (Chris Messina), she decides to write a daily blog and see if anything comes of it. Combining her skill with words with her love of food she takes on the task of cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s landmark tome Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a single year. That’s 524 different meals in only 365 days, and if the married couple thinks this is going to be as relaxing and as easy as proverbial pie than they’ve got a whole other ‘aspic’ coming.
Told in two parts, writer/director Nora Ephron’s (Bewitched, You’ve Got Mail) Julie & Julia is based upon two separate tomes by both Powell and Child. It follows both women at their turning points, Julie when she is struck with inspiration to write her blog in 2002 and Julia (Meryl Streep) when she decides to take up French cooking when her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) gets stationed at the American Embassy in Paris in 1948.
Too be perfectly frank, there is nothing all that wrong with the movie. Without question, this is the best work Ephron has done behind the camera since 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle. The film has an easygoing charm that’s perfectly acceptable, and walking out of the theater I can’t exactly say I felt like I’d been left in the oven to the point of being burned.
But this is a case of one storyline working far better than the other one does. The simple fact is that when Ephron focuses on Julia and Paul things are just about as perfect as a tasty helping of the chef’s famous boeuf bourguignon. Streep is as good as ever, smoothly slipping into the visage of the iconic television personality with her typical trademark ease. Even better is Tucci, and if I thought the two displayed a wonderful amount of chemistry in their few scenes together in The Devil Wears Prada what the pair accomplishes here validates that feeling and then some.
It is the Julie moments where things frustratingly stall out. Not because Adams and Messina aren’t any good, they’re both just fine, but because these scenes don’t really serve any purpose other than to provide a healthy amount of syrupy melodrama. Their story just isn’t interesting, and the more the film kept shifting towards them the more I longed to leave the 21st century and return to Julia in the 20th.
Do not misunderstand, by and large these modern day moments are hardly a chore. They just don’t have the same zest or zing that the post-WW II ones do. More than that, it is here that Ephron’s tendency for easily digestible and safely maudlin melodrama tends to take over. As a director, she has always been a fan of the big, gigantic 'Movie Moment,' those scenes in a film where everything is spelled out, the music swells and the eyes fill with tears. When these sequences happen they do not feel anything close to organic, and as sturdy and well done as they are that still doesn’t mean they feel anything close to authentic.
And that’s the problem. When the focus is on Julia, this movie feels as confident as one of her foodie creations. When it doesn’t, it tends to be as comforting as last night’s cold pizza. Granted, that’s pizza from some expensive world famous pizzeria, but just because that’s the case doesn’t make it anymore tasty. Cold pizza is cold pizza, its place of origin not going to do all that much to change that fact.
I’m starting to feel like Ephron shot her creative wad when she wrote the script for When Harry Met Sally… That is one of my favorite films, every part working in such beautiful synchronicity I can’t think of a single cold or false moment. It earns its emotional finale honestly, winning us over with charm, smarts and passion. The coming together of Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal is wholly believable, and what on the surface seems like a partnership destined for failure in the context of the script ends up becoming one we imagine will last into eternity.
I’ve never felt that way about any of the writer’s characters ever since (and, yes, that includes both her rom-coms with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan). Both Julie and Eric frustratingly fail that test, a fact which is all the more surprising when you consider they’re both still together apparently still snuggling within one another’s arms in real life. It’s disconcerting to me that nonfictional beings could feel so false, and it is that distracting shadow that frustratingly keeps the sun from shining here.
The thing is, I could feel the same about Julia and Paul as I do Harry and Sally if the film spent more time with them. It is their relationship that gives is this picture’s heart and soul, their commitment to one another one that could have made me believe in the breakthrough power of love as well as the allure of a good meal.
Conventionalism, however, rears its ugly head and for one reason or another Ephron just isn’t satisfied telling one solid story and leaving the other more or less alone. She feels the need to tie things in tidy bows and cute little ribbons, spelling everything out for the audience when a little bit of restraint would have done her film a lot of good. But I’m starting to feel the filmmaker doesn’t know what that word means, and for all her skills with a pen Julia & Julia manages to be a cinematic soufflé whose parts are far tastier a dish than their rather disappointing sum.
Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)
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