I have a true confession.  I would watch Meryl Streep play Babe Ruth in the Babe Ruth story if she chose to do the role.   She might be able to pull it off.  Without question, and without a doubt she is the greatest American actress of her generation, and this 2 hour long movie just further proves the point. Watch closely and you will see her become/inhabit Julia Child in this movie. It’s amazing.  And there is something else amazing.  This is one of the funnier movies I have seen in a while. I can’t remember when I laughed this much in the theater.  This movie is pure pleasure….rather like good cuisine.   And in one sense there should be a sense of deja vu with this movie as it is the second film in less than a year in which Magic Meryl and Amy Adams have both starred (the previous one was ‘Doubt’). These girls can act! Some kudos should also be given to Stanley Tucci in this film as he is excellent in the role of Julia’s husband Paul.

But alas, not all is perfectly well in this movie. It is a hybrid of two memoirs, one about the life of Julia Child, and one about Julia Child wanna be,  Julie Powell.  And yes, she is a real person and furthermore, she really did work her way through the Child cookbook.  Here in fact is the woman Amy Adams played.

 
Nora Ephron  as director of this hybrid had to take on a formidable challenge. Blend together two memoirs and still do justice to both. In actuality the life of Julia Child could easily have sustained a feature length film all by itself.  Her life has interest and charm, and there is a wonderful love story to be told about the relationship of Julia and her husband Paul who served abroad in Paris and elsewhere in the service of his government.  We really didn’t need the story of Julie Powell in this movie, but having said that, her story has some charm in its own way.  There are worst things in life than desiring to become a gourmet cook like Julia Child.

One thing that Julia Child was up front about always– the girl loved to eat, including eating all kind of decadent rich food.  In an age of cholesterol and calorie counting, the fact that she lived into her early 90s as did her husband hardly seems fair.  I was always baffled by the title of that classic cookbook ‘The Joy of Cooking’. Surely cooking, good cooking, is an art,  but it is only a means to an end.  The real goal or finish line is the joy of eating excellent well prepared food. Cooking is a lot of time consuming hard work, if done properly, especially if you are going to cook lots of things out of the Child arsenal.   French cooking usually takes time and can’t be rushed.  And this movie just proves it.  In fact, this movie should come with aromas being infused into the room, as it makes you hungry, and if you are looking down at bland stale popcorn and a flat cola, it makes you want to throw them on the floor and go find a good restaurant (fortunately for our Yuliya, and for Ann and myself, we went to one just before seeing this movie). 

The storyline framework is set up by Julie’s decision to prepare every single recipe in the Child cookbook in one year, and blog about it.  But that is just one storyline.  The other is the whole adult life of Julia Child until her cookbook is finally first published by Alfred Knopf.   And fortunately that story is given much more play in the earlier parts of this movie. Unfortunately there is not enough of Meryl by the time we get to the movie’s ending.

Despite the flaws in trying to follow the two story lines to a satisfying conclusion, two stories which don’t in fact much intertwine (Child had no real personal interaction with Powell so far as I know, except apparently a pronouncement that she didn’t much like her blog, or some aspect of it), this is an enjoyable movie well worth seeing, especially for the good acting and good fun involved.  Just don’t try eating junk food while watching it.  You’ll be ashamed of yourself.