Julie and Julia

It was the best of stories; it was the worst of stories. Apologies go out to Charles Dickens and actually to director Nora Ephron whose film Julie and Julia should not elicit words such as “worst.” Nor “best” for that matter but really, this film is a tale of two stories. Half of the film is a joy to watch, the other insufferably dull and uninteresting. It is the story of how Julia Child became the world famous Julia Child and the story of blogger Julie Powell who spends a year cooking her way through Child’s cookbook, Mastering The Art of French Cooking. Watching the Julie and Julia produces the realization lifted again from Dickens, “we had everything before us; we had nothing before us.”

Everything is what you get from Meryl Streep. It is what you always get. Rare that she fails to produce a superlative performance and this turn as Child is no exception. She brings a whimsy and joy to the task of bringing Child back to life while giving just enough weight to keep the act from teetering too close to a caricature. Streep is balanced perfectly by Stanley Tucci whose portrayal of Paul Child is dignified and restrained. Tucci keeps this portion of the story grounded while leaving Streep plenty of room to take over and own the film.

Perhaps with those performances as a backdrop, it shouldn’t be surprising that Powell’s portion of the story is so dull. It certainly isn’t fair to the actors portraying the Julie and Eric Powell. Really, Amy Adams and Chris Messina do a perfectly fine job. But their story amounts to nothing. Their travails are dry, the fights feel forced and though the idea of cooking the entire cookbook and documenting it as a blog is interesting, Powell’s writing as shown in the film falls as flat as an improperly made soufflé. Even with an amusing use of The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” while cooking a lobster dinner, the Powell’s entire story is nothing but an unsatisfying appetizer to the Streep main course.

Given the talents of Streep and Tucci it would have been delicious to explore the rich background of the Child lives. Child’s career as a possible spy in the forerunner of the CIA and her husband being targeted by Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare could have provided a more complete tapestry to the life Streep resurrects. As it is, the film provides an unsatisfying counterbalance to the story of one of the first cooking superstars. Powell’s tale is nothing more than a personal story of discovery that should have stayed personal saving an unnecessary tale of two stories.