Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia combines the true stories of 1950s American cooking pioneer Julia Childs (Meryl Streep) and 2000s cooking blogger Julie Powell (Amy Adams), paralleling their similar stories of stalled lives given a new lease through a love for food and cooking. I really can't remember the last film I saw that was about cooking, so I guess this movie interested me just because the subject matter seemed like fairly original territory.

Well, the best thing about this movie is easily Streep. Julia Childs is a tall, bouyant woman of good-humoured determination and infectious charm, and it's hard not to like her. The amazing thing about Streep is that she can play these outlandish characters in such big, bold strokes yet still make it seem absolutely real. She probably deserves yet another Academy Award nomination for her work here, she's easily miles ahead of any of her male contemporaries... De Niro, Hoffman and Pacino can hardly even muster the effort to effect a new characterisation these days. Her double-act with Stanley Tucci in Julie & Julia is also very charming and heartwarming.

I don't really have all that much to say about this movie... overall, it was fairly enjoyable. I'd say it was about 75% good. The Meryl Streep half was great, but the modern Amy Adams half was considerably less so. Adams comes across as way too self-absorbed and trite, and the fact that the character seems aware of this doesn't really make it any more palatable. When I first heard about this movie I imagined a story in my head... I imagined Amy Adams was a neglected housewife who reinvigorated her boring life through the joy of cooking. Instead I got an annoying, whining hipster type who hates her friends, hates her life, hates helping 9/11 victims, and even manages to piss off her own personal hero. If there was a way to watch this movie with only the Meryl Streep half then I would strongly recommend it. As it stands you can take the Amy Adams part as a slightly fun and fluffy ride through a whole world of bizarre and difficult French cuisine, but you'll be waiting for the parts featuring Streep.