By Scott Marks
Written and Directed by Nora Ephron
Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina
2 out of 5 stars
A lot of talented people were involved in the making of “Julie & Julia.” Too bad writer/director Nora Ephron wasn’t one of them.
From the woman who ripped off “Annie Hall” (“When Harry Met Sally”), “An Affair to Remember” (“Sleepless in Seattle”), and “The Shop Around the Corner” (“You’ve Got Mail”), comes another wholly unoriginal and uninspired production.
Let’s first dispense with the niceties: Meryl Streep is superb as the flighty Cordon Bleu chef turned PBS superstar. Given Julia Child’s natural predilection for caricature and self-parody, it is amazing to see how many layers Streep was able to chip through to present a well-rounded character. The same goes for Stanley Tucci. As Paul Child, Julia’s devoted and eternally perplexed husband, Tucci displays a perfect mix of fluster and frolic.
While Julia Child has an enormous body of work preceding her, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) has only a blog and a bestseller to draw from. (“Julie & Julia” has the dubious distinction of being the first film ever based on a blog.) Adams tries hard, but her mousy, underwritten character remains a bit of a cipher.
Technically, the films comes complete with an all-star pedigree. Credit the film’s hard-edged hues to cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt (“The Hunger,” “The Cotton Club,” “Closer”). With little apparent transitional guidance coming from Ephron’s corner, it a wonder that ace editor Richard Marks (“The Godfather Part II,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Broadcast News”), manages to hold everything together. The production design (Mark Ricker), art direction (Ben Barraud) and set decoration (Susan Bode) give the film, particularly the flashbacks, an air of authenticity the screenplay can’t touch.
Based on two bestsellers, the film attempts to parallel the stories of world-renown chef Julia Child — and Julie, the secretary who, out of sheer boredom, decides to spend a year cooking every recipe in her mentor’s “The Art of French Cooking” and blogging about it.
Apart from the obvious similarities, Ephron never manages to glean much from her two characters. The narrative structure is as perfunctory as it gets. Julia and Paul move to a home in France while Julie and her husband Eric (Chris Messina) relocate from the Bronx to Queens. No tension is ever established between Julie’s success and the possibility of jealousy on Eric’s part. When the couple do briefly break up, it’s simply because this is the only way in which Ephron could add a little drama to the end of the second act.
For all her attempts at humor, the biggest laugh in Ephron’s film remains the classic Saturday Night Live bit with Dan Aykroyd as Julia hemorrhaging from a knife wound.
In the end, any film that asks its audience to consider Julia Child’s sex life can’t be all bad. The performances are fine and it sure looks good, but J&J goes down like a cold plate of boiled beef.
Scott Marks was born and raised in some of the finest single screen movie theaters in Chicago. He moved to San Diego in 2000 and has never looked back. Scott authors the blog emulsioncompulsion.com and is co-host of KPBS-Radio’s Film Club of the Air. Please address any bouquets or brickbats to [email protected].
