How have the reviews been for the new Meryl Streep film, “Julie and Julia”?
Here is an example of one of the mostly favorable reviews this film has received. From Columbus Alive: Critically and commercially, Nora Ephron’s film career has been divided between success (Sleepless in Seattle) and failure (Bewitched). The parallel true stories of women and food in Julie and Julia bring her strengths and weaknesses together in one film. In 2002, to escape the stress of a day job with the city of New York fielding medical claim calls from 9/11, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) begins a year-long blog project to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s groundbreaking Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Intercut with Julie’s struggles with recipes, deadlines and the accompanying strain on her marriage is Child’s (Meryl Streep) own history of discovering French cuisine in the 1950s with her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci, in top form), and her determination to make its recipes accessible to American housewives. Like most Ephron films, this one can get a little cutesy and contrived,
Here is an example of one of the mostly favorable reviews this film has received. From Columbus Alive: Critically and commercially, Nora Ephron’s film career has been divided between success (Sleepless in Seattle) and failure (Bewitched). The parallel true stories of women and food in Julie and Julia bring her strengths and weaknesses together in one film. In 2002, to escape the stress of a day job with the city of New York fielding medical claim calls from 9/11, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) begins a year-long blog project to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s groundbreaking Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Intercut with Julie’s struggles with recipes, deadlines and the accompanying strain on her marriage is Child’s (Meryl Streep) own history of discovering French cuisine in the 1950s with her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci, in top form), and her determination to make its recipes accessible to American housewives. Like most Ephron films, this one can get a little cutesy and contrived,
FILM REVIEW Julie and Julia Meryl Streep shines as Julia Child in the otherwise dreary biopic Julie and Julia Everyone wants to make romantic comedies like Nora Ephron’s, but hardly anyone can these days – not even Nora Ephron. Perhaps the blame rests with the 20-year-old gold standard for the genre, When Harry Met Sally…, wherein Ephron’s screenplay met Rob Reiner’s direction and the result was a perfect purée of urban sophistication, banter, interior design, good food and acidly funny observations. Of Ephron’s follow-ups, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail came close; Bewitched and Michael did not. Now, romantic comedies (most of them starring Katherine Heigl) are released almost weekly, each attempting the Harry-Sally mix and failing, often embarrassingly so. Most lack Ephron’s caustic wit and that unquantifiable, fizzy aspirational quality – the viewer must want to be in this relationship, too – upon which all rom-coms depend. Half of Julie & Julia achieves such Ephron excell
If you’re presented a meal where one course is simply divine and the other is just OK, you’re going to rhapsodize about the excellent dish and ignore — and possibly forgive — the lesser fare. So it is with the two movies playing in parallel in “Julie & Julia” — one is exquisite and tasty, the other palatable but bland. The stories that intertwine in director Nora Ephron’s tale involve two women more than 50 years apart. In 1949, Julia Child (Meryl Streep) and her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), have just moved to Paris, where he has a diplomatic posting and she is looking around for a job or hobby that will engage her. In 2002, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is a midlevel bureaucrat in the Manhattan agency handling the recovery from the World Trade Center’s destruction and bemoaning to her husband, Eric (Chris Messina), that she needs a creative outlet.
