Review of Julie & Julia (2009) by Dalem — 08 Aug 2009

This film was very enjoyable largely because of Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child. I think the film also captures a genuine love of food preparation and cooking. It also has some wonderful scenes of post-war Paris street vendors.

However, there are a number of things which prevent this film from really taking advantage of Streep and its material. The stories (both Julie's and Julia's) are straight forward rags to riches stories which show hard work and persistence paying off in the end.

This is not a bad formula to build on, but the film doesn't build much on it. The characters lack depth, especially the husbands, who are portrayed as saints with little lives of their own. Even the main characters lack much complexity in their lives or in their inner selves.

There are no major story twists. The Julie story especially becomes a get-rich-quick-with-remarkably-little-work story. Julie isn't very eccentric or interesting as a character. She seems to have just had a good idea, a love of cooking, and some talent at writing.

At least the Julia story showed someone working for years (not just a year). Julia just loved cooking and kind of oafishly bungled her way to success. Her story was much more interesting than the Julie story.

The scenes in the Paris streets with the vendors were a pleasure to watch. I also think more could have really been made about the genuine love of food preparation. Some great contrasts could have been made between our fast food, buy-it-prepared, convenience philosophy of food and the genuine love of preparing food.