#2 - Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia
Look, a blog post about a movie about a blog!  How very novel!

Anyhow, Julie (Powell, Amy Adams) & Julia (Child, Meryl Streep) tells two parallel stories, each about a married woman, unsure what to do with her life, who decides to write about cooking.  One of them is in 2000's Queens, and the other is in 1950's Paris, writing the cookbook that will inspire the first to write a blog (which inspired the movie) about cooking all the recipes in it.  (Trippy, huh?)  Adams' Julie Powell is sweet on the surface but prone to histrionics, and Streep's Julia Child is smotheringly exuberant.  From beginning to end, I pretty much hated them both.

But that's okay, in a way.  Because their stories, if you can call them that - for this movie had nearly no plot, and only once (after about an hour and ten minutes) had me unsure about what would happen next - are merely furnishings.  Julie & Julia is a visual delight.  Many have said that the recipes are the true star of this film, and they would be close, but not quite on target.  They actually share the spotlight with the sets, the costumes, and the wonderful cinematography that made me want to be there, in New York, in Paris, in gorgeous kitchens and front rooms and restaurants.  And eating delicious French food, of course.

I think Meryl Streep has been unfairly praised for her performance.  In the middle of the movie, Julie and her husband watch a classic (and rather gruesome) Dan Akroyd skit that appears to be the source of Streep's Julia Child, rather than the real Julia.  Amy Adams I must praise simply because she is not the usual perky, childlike Amy Adams character, but that isn't saying much.  The best performance, in my opinion, was by a cute ginger cat.

There is also a hilarious scene involving lobsters that is not to be missed.