Streep's Child well-done in Ephron's 'Julie & Julia'
If you've seen Meryl Streep's joyously ebullient take on Julia Child in trailers for "Julie & Julia," then you already know:
Streep is a hoot-and-a-half as the bigger-than-life American personality who conquered the culinary world with her zest for food and her groundbreaking 1961 recipe book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."
With her slightly befuddled delivery and her sing-songy voice merrily tripping up and down the scale, Julia Child seemed more like a caricature of a TV chef than a real chef cooking up something tasty before the camera.
Streep wisely avoids creating a carbon-copy of Child, but opts for a fluid, organic performance that enjoins the woman's spirit more than her speech and mannerisms, and those are already enjoined to the hilt.
Child is only half of the story in Nora Ephron's movie, culled from Julie Powell's book-inspiring blog "The Julie/Julia Project" and from Child's posthumously completed 2006 autobiography "My Life in France."
The other half, obviously, belongs to Julie, a New Yorker who decides to write her own blog, based on boiling, basting, grilling and processing her way through every one of Child's French recipes in one year: 524 recipes in 365 days.
By day, Julie, played by an effervescent, redheaded Amy Adams, works as a government employee in a cubicle taking complaints from the public. By night, she transforms into an uber-cook, anxiously whipping through Child's recipes, suffering setbacks and emotional meltdowns, and constantly being picked up and encouraged by her patient husband Eric (an empathetic Chris Massina).
"Julie & Julia" opens in 1948 Paris where Julia arrives with her husband Paul, played with wry, nuanced restraint by Stanley Tucci. As Paul forges a career in the U.S State Department at the local embassy, Julia discovers the magic of French food and enrolls at the exclusive Cordon Bleu cooking school to learn its secrets.
The story jumps to the 21st century New York where Julie feels inadequate in the company of her superficial, but successful friends, one of whom sold her blog to Showtime.
"I could write a blog!" Julie says to Eric. "I have thoughts!" And she buys into Julia's conviction that everything can be improved by adding butter.
Even though Streep and Adams worked scenes together in "Doubt," their characters never meet in this movie. Nor did Julie and Julia meet in real life.
So, writer/director Ephron sets up parallels in the women's lives to link them together. Each woman comes into her own through the process of writing about food.
Each gets an "Annie Hall" lobster scene. (Julia attacks the crustacean with zeal; Julie retreats as one strikes back while boiling alive.)
Each is married to a committed, sexy husband who thinks his wife hung the moon, although where Eric's calm starts to erode after so many spousal meltdowns, Paul's obvious delight in being with Julia seldom flags.
The ending of "Julie & Julia" has to qualify as one of the most strained and forced pseudo-happy closures in cinema history.
Shortly before her death in 2004, the elderly Julia was asked what she thought of Julie's blog, and Julia's blunt response was so negative that Ephron doesn't use the exact quote in the script.
Good-guy Eric softens the impact by telling his wife that she should only remember the good Julia from the past, not the mean, old Julia who just put a skewer through Julie's heart.
As if this isn't schmaltzy enough, Julie demonstrates her forgiveness while visiting a Smithsonian shrine set up for the late Julia.
Julie leaves a butter brick next to Julia's portrait, proving that contrary to popular Julia Child wisdom, butter can't improve everything.
"Julie & Julia"
Rating: 2½ stars
Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, Jane Lynch
Directed by: Nora Ephron
Other: A Columbia Pictures release. Rated PG-13 (sexual situations, language) 122 minutes