Written by Alejandro Riera | 06 August 2009

“Julie & Julia” is one lousy “food porn” film. The food is lit flatly, unappetizingly. It lacks sensuality. You can actually watch this film on an empty stomach, whereas films like “Barbette’s Feast,” “Eat Drink Man Woman,” “Big Night” and “Like Water for Chocolate” makes you want to splurge on a huge dinner at a four-star restaurant right after the movie. The food is so sensually shot in those films that you really want to make love to it. The food in “Julie & Julia”? Well, let me put it this way: while Julia Child would easily win the “Top Chef Masters” reality show on Bravo, Gordon Ramsay would have no problem in booting out Julie Powell from his “Hell’s Kitchen” with the appropriate f-bomb.

The second biggest problem with “Julie & Julia” is that Julie Powell’s story is not interesting at all. In weaving her inconsequential story with Child’s more interesting one (the movie is based on Powell’s “Julie & Julia” and on Child’s “My Life in France”), director and writer Nora Ephron delivers a movie that stalls and stops for a good two hours.

It’s 2002 and Julie (Amy Adams) and her husband Eric (Chris Messina) have just moved into a dilapidated 900-square feet apartment above a pizzeria in Queens. She works at an organization helping resettle residents displaced by the attack on the World Trade Center; he is the editor of a specialized magazine. After a lunch with her best friends, who behave like the evil twin sisters of the “Sex and the City” quartet, Julie decides to turn her life around by cooking all of the recipes included in Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cuisine” in 365 days and blog about it. Keep in mind that in 2002, the idea of blogging about anything was as revolutionary as “twittering” is today. So, she spends the whole film cooking and blogging and having temper tantrums whenever she screws up and driving her patient husband up the wall.

Julia’s story is far, far more interesting for obvious reasons: by fighting the male-dominated world of high cuisine and by making accessible that which seemed foreign to many Americans, Child laid the groundwork for much that we see today on television and bookstands (frankly, there would be no Food Network without her).

Julia (Meryl Streep) and her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci in a graceful and sublime performance), a career diplomat, arrive in Paris in 1949. They immediately fall in love with French cuisine and Julia, after trying her hand at some housewife-type hobbies, decides to take cooking classes at France’s celebrated Cordon Bleu school. As the first American woman to attend this school, Julia faces discrimination with the smile and positive attitude which would become the trademarks of her career. She also faces the dark shadows of McCarthyism as she and her husband are harassed by their government for committing the cardinal sin of being liberals. Then comes that best-selling book she co-wrote with Louise Berthalle and Simone Beck, whose publication was beset by many obstacles and personality conflicts.

The best in Child’s life and career was yet to come, but her story in the film ends with the book’s publication. Yes, we get glimpses of Streep recreating some of Child’s most memorable TV moments (even of Dan Aykroyd poking fun at her in a celebrated “Saturday Night Live” skit), but her story lacks any satisfactory closure.

It takes awhile to get used to Streep’s impersonation. At first, she sounds like Graham Chapman or Terry Jones from Monty Python in one of their cross-dressing skits. But Streep nails down Child’s mannerisms and love of life. Nothing can seem to bring this indomitable woman down no matter how many times she faces rejection.

But whenever the movie returns to Julie, it looses its momentum and grace. Julie, the movie character, is just not interesting enough. After awhile, she does get in your nerves. In the end, she is as superfluous and self-involved as her snotty friends at the beginning of the film.

Yet, the most unforgivable sin “Julie & Julia” commits is its rather dull treatment of what lays at the heart of both stories: cooking. It never lingers nor relishes the process nor the final product. Yes, both actresses do their darnedest best to express the joy these women felt preparing these delicious dishes. But when it comes to the actual idea of cooking, the process feels more like a chore than an adventure and the end product not as enticing, like much of this movie.
 

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