It only took 30 years, but Meryl Streep
has done it: She’s the queen of summer
movies.
I know: the audacity, right? This is the
time of year, after all, when youth is supposed
to be served even more than it is
the other nine months. Yet, here we have a
Woman of a Certain Age crashing the party
with regularity. A few years ago, Streep
scored a summer counter-punch with The
Devil Wears Prada; last year, she hit again
with Mamma Mia! In summer 2009, Julie
& Julia could prove definitively that flicks
for adult women can hit triple-digit millions
at the box office, even when the temperatures
flirt with triple digit—provided
those adult women are spending time with
the greatest living American actress.
Streep continues to delight in an effervescent
turn as cooking legend Julia Child,
whose biography makes up half of this factbased
trifle from writer/director Nora Ephron
(You’ve Got Mail). We meet Julia in 1949 Paris,
where she has just moved with her diplomat
husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci, Streep’s Prada
co-star). Faced with long, tedious days, Julia
eventually decides to enroll in culinary
classes at the famed Cordon Bleu, beginning
a journey that will lead her to cookbook-writing/
TV-hosting fame.
Her counterpart is Julie Powell (Amy
Adams), a frustrated, would-be novelist
in 2002 Manhattan, working the horrible
job of fielding calls from people seeking
post-9/11 assistance. Seeking her own
inspiration and release from monotony,
she turns to her avocation for cooking,
opting to launch a blog in which she’ll
chronicle preparing all 524 recipes from
Julia Child’s seminal cookbook Mastering
the Art of French Cooking in 365 days, testing
the patience of her devoted husband,
Eric (Chris Messina).
Ephron alternates between her two
stories at predictable intervals, attempting
where she can to establish parallels
between her two heroines: career restlessness,
relocation to a new home,
birthday dinners. It’s a narrative gamble,
because the approach practically
demands that the two stories prove
equally charming—or risk an audience’s
impatience to get back to the “good”
one.
And, on a certain level, it sort of succeeds.
Ephron still knows how to craft clever
dialogue and how to create a few exquisitely
embarrassing situations for her protagonists.
Adams continues to prove herself an
endearing screen presence, and there’s an
approachable arc to her efforts at finding
self-confidence in her skills as both writer
and chef. Streep, meanwhile, does exactly
what she always seems to do on screen: make
inhabiting another person look effortless.
Taking her cue from Julia’s high-pitched trill
and mop of unruly curls, Streep turns her
into a creature of almost boundless energy
and enthusiasm—and, for an audience, that
kind of enthusiasm can become infectious.
But, there’s a fundamental problem with
Julia Child’s story: Her life wasn’t all that
complicated. While Ephron acknowledges
the quirks at the heart of Julia’s personality—most notably, the imposing height that
probably contributed to making her a later-in-life bride who never had children—there’s
very little in the way of actual drama that she
ever needs to confront. And those situations
that do arise—including Paul getting caught
up in the anti-Communist investigations of
the 1950s—don’t necessarily feel organic to
Julia’s journey. Her half of the film takes the
episodic style of a typical movie biography,
and dampens it even more with the reassuring
but predictable rhythms of a romantic
comedy. As a result, the force of Streep’s performing
personality overwhelms a largely
inert story. And even in the more generally
satisfying “Julie” portion of the film,
it’s telling that the biggest laugh comes not
from anything Ephron has written but from
a scene in which Julie and Eric watch the
vintage Saturday Night Live sketch in which
Dan Aykroyd impersonates Julia Child.
Ephron also commits one major—even
if historically accurate—mistake late in
the film, at a point when Julie hears about
the then-still-living Julia Child’s reaction
to her blog project. The information seems
totally out of character with the Julia we’ve
been spending time with, inspiring a viewer
to wonder what we’re missing from her
story or whether this perky Julia is an
idealized figment of Julie’s imagination.
Streep is so thoroughly engaging that, of
course, we want to believe that her version
is the real deal. If she’s got the charisma to
rule the summer, she can bring spice to a
sometimes bland dish.
JULIE & JULIA
Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci
Rated PG-13
