My mind was definitely made up before I even pressed Play on this one. I sat down pre-judging. It just sounded like such a colossally bad idea, inter-cutting an account of Julia Child's creation of her seminal cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, with the story of a whining blogger trying to master Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Yes, we are now living in an world where they make movies about people blogging. We are now living in a world where studio executives think that a woman writing and complaining about a blog is at least as interesting as a woman writing a groundbreaking book and changing the face of American cuisine.
The box office success of Julie and Julia (Julia Child gets second billing in the title no less) will probably spawn a glut of blog-related films. Look for the Cinema Con Carne movie this summer. The part of Danny Onions will be played by Topher Grace. My wife Jenn will be played by Charlize Theron. Harry will be played by five different stunt babies. Frequent commenter Swazz Perkins will be portrayed by Tyrese Gibson. Here's a scene from the script:
Danny Onions: Did you read my blog yet, honey?
Jenn: Oh, um, not yet, I've been too busy with Harry. I will today.
Harry: (farting noise)
Danny Onions: Ooh look! I got a comment on one of my reviews, it's from Swazz Perkins.
Jenn: What's it say?
Danny Onions: It says "You don't know what your talking about, fag. Paul Blart Mall Cop is the Citizen Kane of fat-guys-falling-down.
Jenn: Can you take Harry, my arm hurts?
Anyway, it sounded like a bad idea and every one I know that saw the film confirmed it for me as well. I think my friend Annabelle said it best with respects to the Julie half of the film, "I wanted her to fail, I wanted her to suffer, I wanted everything to turn out bad". Julia Child as played by Meryl "fucking" Streep is a person you want to spend time with. She is charming. Larger than life. She has an effervescent personality and a taste for life and she infects everyone she comes into contact with the same kind of zeal. Julie Powell on the other hand, is not someone I want to spend any time with at all, and yet director Nora Ephron handcuffs Meryl "fucking" Streep to this utterly unappealing character like some kind of chick-flick version of The Defiant Ones .
From the moment we are introduced to Julie Powell, she is an annoyance and as the movie goes on, she becomes a structurally and thematically imposed annoyance. We aren't allowed to view and event in Julia's life without an unwanted answer from Julie's. It becomes a deflating call and response routine where just as you are brought high by a formative episode in Julia's story, you are then brought low by Julie whining about her 900 square foot apartment, or how she's ever going to be able to bone a duck, or whether anyone is reading her blog. Julia Child is a powerhouse. Julie Powell is a wimp.
And Amy Adams as Julie is pretty awful, which is shitty because I don't think Amy Adams is a bad actress. There is something about her delivery and oh-so-precious mannerisms that are really grating. The Julie character and the Julie half of the script is a classic case of Bad Movies Happening to Good Actors. But poor Amy Adams doesn't have the consolation of company as she goes down with the ship. Meryl "fucking" Streep is absolutely killing the shit out of her Julia Child, canoodling with Stanley Tucci in Paris and taking on the gastronomical establishment in a perfectly light, entertaining little biopic. Amy Adams is stuck in a movie about a fucking blog.
And let's examine the actual blog for a moment. Julie Powell is blogging about her adventure cooking 524 Julia Child recipes in 365 days. Take away the gimmicky time constraint and you have a movie about a woman following recipes. Julia Child WROTE Mastering the Art of French Cooking and somehow that only warrants 50% of the movie, with the other half devoted to a chick simply using Mastering the Art of French Cooking for its intended purpose, and complaining every step of the way. I feel like Nora Ephron completely fucked us all over, and not just because of her past sap-crimes. No, by making Julie and Julia instead of just Julia, she has denied us a proper biopic of Julia Child, who it turns out is really interesting and cool (I know other people already knew this, but I didn't). No one's going to make another Julia Child movie now. No other actress is going to step into Julia's gigantic dresses after Meryl "fucking" Streep made this definitive version. It's a bummer. It's a waste. I just learned that Julia and her husband Paul might've even been spies in their early days. You're telling me that wasn't as interesting as some chick following a beef bourguigon recipe? I know they made two Truman Capote movies and two volcano movies and two asteroids-destroying-Earth movies, but I just don't see the metro-sexual coke addict neanderthals of Hollywood greenlighting a second Julia Child movie, especially after they famously declared last year that they would stop making "women" movies.
Adding insult to injury, in the last ten minutes of the film, as Julie is featured in the New York Times and her life seems to be getting tied into a neat little bow, she finds out that the real Julia Child has turned her nose up at the blog. So let me get this straight: Ephron sells Meryl "fucking" Streep short with half a Julia Child biopic, and it turns out that the real Julia Child even thinks Powell's blog is a fucking gimmicky waste of time? Shouldn't that have given Ephron some indication that maybe Julie's story should've just stayed a blog? It does provide the movie with a satisfying punchline though, I must say. Watching Amy Adams' face fall at the news has the effect of Julia Child speaking from the grave and saying exactly what is on the audiences mind. It almost makes the Julie half of the movie worth it. Almost.
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