Review for Julie & Julia

Julia Childs is to French cookery what Gordon Ramsey is to swearing... I mean cookery now and this film tells the story of how she trained to be one of the first culinary legends. Portrayed by Meryl Streep, her performance is eccentrically wonderful as an American woman in France who went from not even being able to boil an egg to one of the world's top chefs.

Julie (Amy Adams) is a failed writer who works in call centre and gets the kind of abuse that anyone who has done that job can relate to. After her 'friend' publishes an article about her pathetic life she feels a desire to fill her mundane life with something else. What she decides is to work her way through all 524 recipes of Julia Child's Art of French Cooking in a year and document it all on a blog.

Writer/Director Nora Ephron (Writer of classic When Harry Met Sally...) tries to blend these two stories together and to me it works and it doesn't. The Julia Childs story is interesting and Streep's performance is joy to watch, but when you get down to the nitty, gritty, nothing much happens beyond her attempts to write the elusive book. The Julie story is almost like a Bridget Jones and Ephron could have easily have made a film based solely on this book alone. However, the performance by Adams is a little dull and again, when you get down to the nitty, gritty, nothing much happens and it is just one recipe after another with the occasional marital issue. My feeling is that she started adapting on one or other of the books and got to the end and realised that she only had maybe half of a film and then just decided to add the other book to pad it out. Some are comparing the style of shifting from one narrative to the next to The Godfather Part Two and though I'd like to scream 'Blasphemy' over that, I have to admit the styles are similar and both stories do support each other, though at times during the Julie scenes I was begging for another Julia scene.

Extras are pretty good if you are a fan of the real Julia Child including a host of interviews from people who knew her in 'Family and Friends Remember Julia Childs', Julia's Kitchen which is a look at the actual kitchen held on display at the Smithsonian Institution, Cooking lessons which shows some of the recipes from the film being made by the real Julia Childs. The commentary by Nora Ephron is nice, but nothing special and she really should have invited one of the stars or someone else to discuss the film with and the documentary is a nice overview of the creation of the film.

Julie and Julia is a nice film, but not exactly the greatest film I've ever seen. Streep's performance (as always) is wonderful and Adams is fine in general, but I come away from the film feeling a little unsatisfied and also with a desire to go and make myself a poached egg. At least now I'll know how!