Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia 2009
Director Nora Ephron
Writers Nora Ephron (screenplay)
              Julie Powell (book)
Starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina 

Synopsis (by MOster)
This movie chronicles the parallel developments in the lives of Julia Child and Julie Powell as Mrs. Child finds an alternative purpose to housewifery in learning to cook and writing a cookbook, while Mrs. Powell find an alternative purpose to working in a call center for the Lower Manhattan Development Center after 9/11 in following that cookbook and blogging about her experience.  Both grow personally and professionally, and both are supported by their husbands.  The movie is based on a book by Mrs. Powell, which in turn is based on her life (to what extent I don't know).


The woman
this was ok. it didn't suck, which is few and far between with the stuff we normally watch for fun. i had heard that half of this movie was really good, and the other half you couldn't care less about. meaning, the meryl streep part was really interesting and should have been an entire movie on it's own, and no one cares about a miserable chick in queens searching for a noteable project to make herself feel accomplished. i don't really agree with that. i think meryl streep did an excellent job, as usual, and both sections held my interest, but that's as far as i would praise it. i wish there was some sort of developement about the real relationship between the two characters, like they actually met, or there was some sort of personal communication between them, negative or positive would have satisfied me. just leaving it the way it was left a big blank spot in the end for me. indifferent about the movie on a whole is what i'm walking away with.shmeh plus. that's what i would give this if i were grading. my husband is a big girl, and cried at the ending. being nice is much more difficult.

MOster

This movie was exactly fine.  I think the acting was good overall, with the Childs (Meryl Streep and Stanly Tucci, though the speech that he affects is gratnig at times) doing a better job than the Powells.  The story is engaging; and I really developed empathy with each of the leads, which was emphasized by the disappointment I feel with  the end of the tale.  Julia Child's life was much more interesting than Julie Powell's, but that wasn't due to the difference in the acting; I think Julia just had a more interesting, intense time in developing the cookbook than Julie did in mimicing it.


Technically, the movie was also right around a B-.  Direction, production value, and editing were all fine (the editing was probably a bit better than the other elements), but not really much more than that.  A few nice appearances, most notably by Jane Lynch, rounded out the experience.