Julie & Julia

Julie and Julia is a cute little film about Julia Child, the famous cook played here by Meryl Streep, before she became famous and modern Julie, played by Amy Adams, who is kind of a non-famous writer. Julie has a bunch of rich and important (read: snooty) friends who have no idea what she's going through because they can't relate. Julie decides, with the recommendation of her boyfriend, to go through Julia Child's entire cookbook and blog about the experience. She does so (with some difficulty), but gets quite a following of friends and readers she doesn't know.

Meanwhile the other story is how Julia Child got to where she first published her book. She had moved to France and couldn't decide what she wanted to do being the wife of a U.S. government employee. She finally decides to go to the Cordon Bleu school of Culinary Arts to pursue cooking. She starts out poorly and the school administrator hates her because she's trying to learn French cooking so she can write a cookbook in English for Americans. She eventually passes the program and writes the cookbook and gets it published.

Julie hopes Julia Child has seen or heard about her blog and dreams about meeting her someday. She invites her friends over for various dinners and they rave about the cooking. Apparently, Julie is quite good at this. I won't ruin the ending of this one, but there's not much in the way of gun fights or car explosions.

The film is probably in that "girl-movie" range, but I did enjoy it (mostly for the food porn aspect of it all – seriously, everything looks delicious). It's not action packed or anything, but the story line is easy to follow and it's quite enjoyable. Streep plays a pretty good Julia Child. If you've ever seen Child on television, you know she's basically a whack job and a complete airhead and Streep plays up both parts without going too over the top with it. Amy Adams is slightly less believable, but still does a decent performance overall. It's worth watching if you like food/cooking, or if you want to impress your lady friend without boring yourself silly.