Sunday, June 6, 2010

Movie Review

I don't usually do movie reviews, partly because we see so few movies worthy of a review and partly because when  we do see a good one I hate to gush, but this week we saw a movie we both enjoyed so much, hated to see it end, that I decided to do one.
The movie is Julie and Julia starring Amy Adams, Meryl Streep and  Stanley Tucci.  It's the story of how Julie Powell , Adam's character, unhappy in her job, hating her tiny apartment, wanting to do something worthwhile,  decides to write a  blog, The Julia Project,  where she will chronicle her adventures cooking all of Julia Child's recipes from her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  This involves cooking 524 recipes in 365 days.
Nora Ephron directed this film and while I'm not a big fan of "chick flicks", even less so my husband, this is not really that genre.  It's a movie for people who like interesting characters.
Ephron combines the real life Julie's Powell's blog with Julia Child's My Life in France, and quite frankly it's the Julia Child part of this movie that makes it so special.  Meryl Streep as Julia and Stanley Tucci as her husband are wonderful, and so believable, great chemistry.  Whereas Amy Adams as Julie and Chris Messina as Eric are good in their roles, but Julie is not a particularly likable person, much too whiny and self-involved, so I found myself wanting to get back to the Julia side of the story.
But Julia and Paul Child are warm and wonderful, people you want to know better. Julia too lives in a tiny apartment, searches for something meaningful to do, trying first hat making, then learning French and finally learning French cooking.  Not matter the circumstances Julia was upbeat and cheerful, ready for whatever challenge was ahead.

At the end of the movie Julie  finds out that Julia Child (who was still alive amazingly enough) didn't think much of her project, that it was too much self promotion and too little about the food, and as I read somewhere Julia did not suffer fools gladly so was less than impressed.
A good movie always has good supporting movie and Julie and Julia was rich with them, in particular Linda Emond as Julia's French co-writer.

One review I read said that perhaps this is a movie that only "foodies" would like, but I disagree, if you hated food you'd like this movie.  I use to laugh at Julia Child on tv, and now I wish I had paid more attention to her, as played by Meryl Streep she was a treasure.

No comments:

Post a Comment

                               GODZILLA KING OF THE MONSTERS Anyone who blogged with Janet knew she was a huge livelong fan of ...