Julie & Julia **1/2

Directed by Nora Ephron.
Screenplay by Nora Ephron.  Based on book by Julie Powell.
Released August 2009.
With Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, Linda Edmond.
Seen in Theater.

Over all an entertaining night at the cinema, if not a little on the light side.

The premise is that Julie Powell has decided to take on a whole cook book by Julia Childs, day by day - recipe by recipe.  And she blogs about her triumphs and tribulations.  The blog gets a lot of followers.  Concurrently, the film also is kind of a bio - pic of Julia Childs in which it shows her life when she starts to become a cooking professional. It shows her relationship with her husband Paul Child.  Eventually Julie accomplishes all the recipe, her piece de resitance being Stuffed Deboned Duck.

For me, I was more interested in the Julia Child's portion of the film, as I remember seeing her on TV when I was just a kid.  And it was interesting to know that she was the one who popularized French Cooking in the states as there were no French cooking books in the States at the time.  It was also cool seeing some of the ingredients and techniques that simply are not being used today.  Also Ms. Childs was played by One Meryl Streep who always seems to have the gravitas (the new word of the times) to pull off any role she likes no matter how trivial.

On the other hand, the Julie portion, while nice, did not have much to say.  Sure there was her obsession with the project that strained the relationship with her husband and she was cute as all heck, but with this much time passing (always the case with these blogs that I am several  months behind) there is simply not much that comes to mind when I think of those parts.  This lack of impresion after the passing of time is an indicator of how much of an impression the movie made on me.  If I don't remember much, then it didn't make much of an impression.  Clearly, I was able to remember more scenes from the Julia part, so to me that was the better part.



And an interview.