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I have never been Meryl Streep’s biggest fan. My biggest complaint is she tends to be more chops than heart and, although many eat her up with a spoon, I’m not so much in love with her. But she does hit a home run once in awhile. In "Julie & Julia," Streep hits one and it goes way into the parking lot.
"Julie & Julia" is adapted from two books: Julia Child’s "My Life in France" and Julie Powell’s "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen." In 2002, Powell, a low-level government worker in Manhattan, began "The Julie/Julia Project," a blog detailing her quest to complete every recipe in Child’s "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year. The movie intersperses Julie’s travails with the real Julia herself, tracing the latter’s beginnings as a cooking icon.
Streep could have easily done an imitation of Child and rode the rest of the movie on cruise control. To her credit and our delight, she doesn’t. Although the film certainly celebrates Child’s significant contributions, the two-time Oscar winner’s transcendent performance turns it into nothing less than a celebration of the woman’s indomitable spirit and infectious joie de vivre. Amy Adams, who co-starred with Streep in last year’s "Doubt," has the less glamorous role as Powell, but acquits herself well.
Writer/director Nora Ephron, who has never quite equaled the lovely "Sleepless in Seattle," has eschewed romantic comedy entirely, instead making an ambitious "chick flick" centered around French cooking. I say "ambitious" because "Julie & Julia" doesn’t always work. At its best, the movie is a marvelously entertaining story about two very different women united by their love of French cooking and a deep desire to prove themselves. Unfortunately, Ephron never finds the rhythm for the two disparate lives and, because of this, "Julie & Julia" meanders more than once.
"Julie & Julia" is a mouthwatering, entertaining, even touching movie that could have used a sterner hand in the editing room. Nonetheless, it managed a respectable $20 million in its debut last weekend and should make back its $40 million budget in no time.
Julie & Julia
PG-13
Three reels out of four
In area theaters now
Tyson
R
Available Tuesday
Directed by Oscar-nominated screenwriter James Toback, "Tyson" is a no-holds-barred documentary about the troubled, former heavyweight champion. Interspersing frank interviews with The Champ himself and rare archival footage, "Tyson" traces its subject’s meteoric rise in the 1980s straight through to his many legal troubles in the ’90s and 2000s.
It received a standing ovation at the ’08 Cannes Film Festival and was given the festival’s Regard Knockout Award, created just for this movie.
