Movie Review: Julie & Julia is an Excellent Feel-Good Flick, Just Not Oscar-Worthy

Judging from the early trailers for the movie Julie & Julia, one (as least from the perspective of this male writer) may think that this may fall into the trapping of a typical "chick flick", which as it appears would be about the lives of world-renowned cook Julia Child (Meryl Streep) parallel with the life of a young New York woman in Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and their "search for love" as they cook their ways through life's obstacles. But while most of this plot holds true, the lack of the standard "search for love" plot is what helps this movie stand above the rest.

Instead of taking the very interesting and unique story of a modern women who learns life lessons from Julia Child and "dumbing it down" to make for a more basic mainstream rom-com, the director Nora Ephron (You Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle) focuses more on the back story of Child's famously known love for cooking without making a male love interest the major center of attention (i.e. girl tries to make it in "XX {occupation or 'dream'}" and then falls in love with "XX {'dreamy' guy or 'opposite' guy who she never expects to be with}", ending with girl and "XX" falling madly in love). The story adapted from the real-life book (of the same title of the movie here) written by Julie Powell is about Powell, who's struggling to find herself and is stuck in a not-so-happy job as a 9/11 relief worker (with her story taking place in 2002), attempting to accomplish the big goal of cooking every single recipe (524 all together) from Julia Child's well-known book Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year and then write blogs about her experiences in doing so.

What makes this movie so good is the way that they tell the story along with having an excellent cast to help support it. Throughout the film, the story shifts perfectly back and forth between Julie's sometimes fun, but often frustrating journey through the cookbook leading up to the writing of her book (based off of the blogs) and Julia's (equally) sometimes fun but often frustrating journey through culinary school leading up to the writing of her book as well. With each segment of their tale being a good 5 - 10 minutes each, the movie never feels out of balance with telling one person's story more than the other while also laying out some nice (but not too obvious) parallels to each others very different and very similar lives. The cast is also what makes Julie & Julia work so well. Meryl Streep once again keeps her streak of great to excellent movie roles going strong as she puts on yet another award-worthy performance. She absolutely disappears into her role as Child and honest to goodness makes you believe that she is actually the woman (who passed away in 2004) back in the flesh. Amy Adams (as always) is very good and emotional as Powell, despite the character itself lacking in substance (I'll get to that in a second), Stanley Tucci as Child's husband provides some great chemistry with Streep, and the other supporting cast (Chris Messina, also pretty good in the recent Away We Go as Powell's husband and Jane Lynch, who does a great job in a depart from her usual past 'zany' characters from comedies like 40 Year Old Virgin and Best In Show, as Child's close sister) are really good in their side roles.

The only complaint that might be found with this great film and what prevents it from being absolutely "Oscar-worthy" is the lack of depth given with the Julie Powell character played by Amy Adams. Adams is good playing her as a young woman trying to find herself through the power of Julia Child's cooking, but the overall demeanor of the actual character itself may seem like a turn-off for some viewers who may discouraged to really take a shining to her. To some, she may appear to be a person struggling with getting her life together, while to others (including some viewers that I spoke to after this screening) she may come off as a whiny immature girl who is often frustrated with what she has (a "good" husband, a home, a job) and just wants to become "just another blogger" with feeling like she has to share her life experiences with the world in order to live her life fully. The movie kind of addresses the later feeling towards its climax but it still comes off a little bit of "Who cares?" for the Powell character because of her actions sometimes appearing two-dimensional.

Other than this minor glitch, Julie & Julia is one of the best female-focused movies to come out in a good while that doesn't fall into the same old cliché of the "girl meets boy" plot that has been done to death. The story's very well put-together, there are plenty of good laughs (mostly provided by the light-hearted, sharp-tongued Child character), and Meryl Streep (following up from her excellent turn in Doubt) again putting on one of her best performances ever. Definitely check this out if you want to get away for a few this summer from the crazy robots, wizards, mutants, and dinosaurs that have been floating around the theaters as of late.