Review: ‘Julie and Julia’ A Masterpiece
by Doug TenNapelI don’t recall liking much of Nora Ephron’s work other than “When Harry Met Sally.” In fact, if I knew she made “Julie and Julia,” I probably would have avoided it, since “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail” just kind of mash together in my mind. But “Julie and Julia” is more than good: it’s brilliant cinema.
The first thing that grabbed me was the character work. The hero, Julia Powell (her real life blog is here) is a foodie blogger played by Amy Adams. I’m used to watching Amy Adams over my kid’s shoulder in “Enchanted,” which plays in our house on continual loop. I didn’t know Amy knew how to turn down the volume and play a “plain-Jane, yet interesting”… but she’s awesome. This isn’t her usual glowing, perky role where she turns it on like a fire-hose. And she doesn’t turn invisible like when she played a piece of cardboard in “Doubt.”
Back to the characters because “J and J” is a feast of interesting, appealing people I haven’t seen chew up the screen like this in a long time. The real Julia Child is already a great character, but Streep not only personifies this larger than life personality, she pulls off hilarious physical acting. She’s a comedic presence that had our audience laughing with every scene. And she looks huge, just like the real Julia Child. As a 6′8″ fellow, I appreciated the height jokes like when Streep reclines in a bed only to have her feet extend well beyond the mattress.
But Streep shows us sides of Child we probably hadn’t seen before: her sexuality, her competitive spirit, and the mourning for children. How painfully ironic that her name was Child.
I don’t know how Streep does it, but she makes her jowls look bigger. Her hands look big and mannish. Her shoulders rounded so that she looks like she’s playing a man in drag, which is kind of how Child came off to me. A refrigerator in a dress.
Stanley Tucci was in another favorite food movie of mine, “Big Night.” My friends told me to see Big Night then go out for Italian food. My Beloved and I saw “J and J” on date night then went out for dinner. It was one of our better date nights… much better than the time I made her see “Mimic.” But guys, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a chick flick. It’s a people flick. I’d take anybody to see this and if they didn’t like it, they’d need therapy. Yeah, this is the first sure fire Oscar contender I saw this year. At least this is the one I’ll be rooting for when they award it to some movie about a transvestite who marries a 12-year-old boy then murders him because Republican Christians fired him from his job.
Where was I? Oh yeah, Stanley Tucci. He plays the nicest guy in the world. He’s a great, understated character to provide contrast to Streep’s living cartoon. Hats off to Chris Messina as Julie Powell’s long-suffering husband and Jane Lynch who plays Julia Child’s sister.
This is for Nora Ephron: stop wasting your time at Huffington Post and make more movies. As a married man, you’re one of the few who seem to get marriage… even men in marriage. You seem to like men, which is rare among women writers. As someone who writes graphic novels, you’re one of the few who gets what it’s like to long for a significant project to find its way to publisher. You get the narcissism of working on one’s craft while someone else is in the house being neglected for some great piece of art. As someone who knows his way around the kitchen, you get the love of cooking, experimenting with recipes, even shopping for ingredients. Finally, you get Julia Child… including details like her love of sending post cards.
My wife went through a phase when she became an airplane pilot in the ’90s where she studied great women of the last century. She stumbled on the biography of Child Appetite for Life by Noel Riley Fitch. So inspired was my Beloved that she mailed Julia a birthday greeting for her 88th birthday. A few weeks later, she received a hand written post card from Julia herself! We were both so excited and my Beloved went into a cooking phase where I was the benefactor.
Man, this makes me wanna cook something. Maybe I’ll try making beef bourguignon.
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47 Comments
I'm glad you posted such a positive review, my friend, but her name is Julia Child. No "s." I'm going to see it this week. Meryl Streep continues to kick butt: this will be her 3rd consecutive major summer hit, after Mamma Mia (which I enjoyed thoroughly in spite of myself) and "Devil Wears Prada."
Ah, Ephron, such an exceptional talent, but she just couldn't resist jarring the joyful mood of the entire experience with a couple of political jabs.
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My brother had the pleasure of chauffering Ms. Child when she came to Milwaukee to dedicate a new culinary school. On the way from the airport, she mentioned that she'd recently met Michael Jackson and uttered the immortal line, "What a strange little man." He laughed for weeks.
I love Stanley Tucci as an actor. I would love to see this film…but it'll probably be a DVD experience for me. Sounds like a goodie, though.
P.S. From Julie's blog today:
Er, I probably should have mentioned this for, but for those of you who've not bought the book yet and are meaning to: I really ought to warn you about the language. I happen to believe that curse words are vital parts of the language, and I write accordingly. If you are not one of those people, you're probably not going to be thrilled with J&J: The Book! Also, yeah, I bash on Republicans a lot. It's nothing personal – some of my dearest friends… well, no, but dearest relatives – are Republican. I just am terrified of everything you stand for, is all.
Gee, I'm so shocked she has a movie made about her life…..
Perhaps she does not realize that if it were not for the Right doing all the necessary things to keep this country safe then the Left would not be free to hold opinions like hers. That probably requires more insight than most on the Left are capable of mastering.
"this is the one I’ll be rooting for when they award it to some movie about a transvestite who marries a 12-year-old boy then murders him because Republican Christians fired him from his job."
Of course, Tucci's character is almost fired by Republicans in this movie. He's persecuted, or something. Julia calls it "kafkaesque," though I remember "The Trial" being distinctly scarier.
I notice that in reviewing this "masterpiece" the author barely mentions one whole half of the movie. He has good reason. The "Julie" section is a bust. It's a waste of time with relatively uninteresting characters, boring plot turns, and general corniness. I don't care how good the Child part is, no way this is a masterpiece.
Geez, now I'm torn. I still haven't fully recovered from the soul-crushing experience that was "You've Got Mail" (seriously, there are days when I'm tired and run-down and I can think of no other reason for it than that I saw that movie ten years ago). I'm afraid a Nora Ephron movie about 'blogging might just finish me off.
I told my friends after seeing the movie on Friday that I thought Streep will win the Oscar for her performance as Julia Child. In spite of the slight GOP bashing and a sprinkling of F- and S-words (2 or 3), I loved this movie. So did my 22 year old and 15 year old daughters. It is laugh-out-loud funny, charming, and inspiring. Don't miss it!
Well … I think Streep is sexy in a way that Child could never be but still, although dragged by the wife (in payment for Hellboy II), I rather enjoyed it, too. The modern day part of the story was not as good by a long shot, however.
I found the film to be a bore, but a bearable one. The Julia Child biography bits were very interesting, but as much as I like Amy Adams the Julie bits were awful. This Julie lady just comes off as an overprivileged bratty chick with too much time on her hands. I don't care about her pithy problems, show me more Julia doing amazing things.
[...] A delightful blog piece: Taste with the Eyes: A Tribute to Julia Child: The Perfect Lunch Film review: Doug TenNapel, Big Hollywood: Review: ‘Julie and Julia’ A Masterpiece [...]
Well said!
I agree! Just had to smack the right and make McCarthy seem like some crazed idiot! Loved the movie, but irritated that she couldn't keep her 'left' in check. AND…..why oh why did they have to throw in the 'F' word? It was almost the end of the movie and BAM! there is was for no reason! Just because a PG-13 rating allows it once? Come on….with great writing, you don't need it!
Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail aren't the same movie?
In re the glorious Meryl Streep, I share the…feelings… of earlier posters. I'd probably pay to see her do commercials. Stanley Tucci will be forever immortal for the line "You see, my brother…" with which I tormented a friend with a crazy family for years. Sounds like the Child part of this movie would be worth the rental.
"What a strange little man." Gee I'm sorry I missed that.
At a Q & A the actress that played Julia's sister said that, "you have to understand, there was a lot of Anti-Americanism in France. Especially after World War Two." Shows you where these people are coming from.
She also described Julia's parents as "Conservative thinkers whereas Julia and her sister were more Liberal thinkers. The right kind of thinkers." The audience erupted in applause. Julia's character said, "pop would never understand this." as they laugh and eat. So Republicans don't laugh and eat? Is that the difference between Conservative and Liberal?
Did she elaborate about what's so terrifying about Republicans? I'd like to go head-to-head with someone who thinks like that. Particularly after reading some of HR3200.
haha…no, of course not! At least not in that post. I didn't bother to scan through the rest. But the link is above, if you feel like digging.
Yes, like people who bash the troops. And I don't just mean the "babykiller" group, I mean even the more conservative-minded who still look down on those who join the military as being too poor or stupid to have a "real job" and a "real education." That, to me, is even worse than those who accuse them of being murderers – it's hypocritical, pretending to support the troops while looking down on them.
Wondering whether "Big Hollywood" is the place to say it, but who cares whether the actors have blogsites ? Breitbart doesn't attempt to act ,does he ?
Shut up and sing .
Saw the movie on Sunday and really enjoyed it. However, I would have much preferred the movie just be "Julia." I didn't care for the "Julie" character at all. And the F-bomb thrown in felt completely out of place. On a funny side note, my husband and son went to see "G.I. Joe" at the same time. We compared notes on the way home and when I mentioned to my husband about the f-word being thrown in, my son said, "Mama, your movie was the 'bad' movie." I had been worried that their movie was going to have all the foul language. Meryl Streep was amazing in this movie.
There's a hilarious parody of a "trailer" for Sleepless in Seattle, re-mixed as a "horror/thriller" movie, along with Taxi Driver as a romantic comedy and the Shining as a "feel-good family comedy." I kind of wonder if the movie is along those lines. Bewitched was a terrible pile of junk, and I get the feeling that Ephron is living in 1952 not 2009. I get why "Funny People" bombed — it was probably too close in plot like Spanglish to the fragility and "going-away-ness" of the nuclear family. But this film, Juie and Julia, seems stuck in phony rebellion against the year 1952. Ephron seems stuck like most of the cultural elite in a bubble where it's always time to rail against restrictive roles for women instead of the reality of the collapse of the nuclear family.
Never fails to surprise me. Conservatives sycophantically sucking up to a liberal, GOP-bashing movies culture. Actually, it's not going to make them like you.
The McCarthy lines were one thing. I don't care for McCarthy, and for all I know the Childs family may have felt persecuted by him.
But the line from Julie's employer — "a Republican would fire you" — is just Hollywood/Efron GOP-bashing.
P.S. From Julie's blog today:
Er, I probably should have mentioned this for, but for those of you who've not bought the book yet and are meaning to…yeah, I bash on Republicans a lot. It's nothing personal – some of my dearest friends… well, no, but dearest relatives – are Republican. I just am terrified of everything you stand for, is all.
Gee, I'm so shocked she has a movie made about her life…..good to know it's "nothing personal" :p
I glanced at the book in the bookstore and saw one of those sweet little jabs of the "my aunt is so nice and kind, I can't believe she votes Republican" variety. (Interesting, because by many accounts, the real-life Ms. Powell is not all that nice and kind herself.)
Well, perhaps all this will be good for her. Harder to stay in your nice insulated Democratic bubble when you're getting attention from all sides and people are starting to hold you accountable a little bit.
Who said it was supposed to?
I haven't seen the movie yet (planning to see it soon), but I have read the book and Julie Powell drops the F-bomb over and over and every work-related paragraph includes a jab at the evil Republicans at her office. At one point, Powell drops a dessert on the pavement and still serves it in her office break room, but hurries to tell the 6 Dems at the office to steer clear, because it may contain glass and antifreeze.
It sounds very much as if Ephron toned down a LOT of the original source material from Powell's end.
It's the author's blogsite. So, technically she is paid to talk. The Julie part of the movie is based on a real woman who wrote a blog about cooking through Julia Child's cookbook. The blog became a book and the book became a movie.
I agree. That bit made me wince.
Pity. I would probably have gone to see J&J, but I think I'll pass. I've gotten to the point where those little GRATUITOUS (and usually UNTRUE) jabs drive me nuts. I actually have MUCH higher tolerance for movies with anti-conservative themes as a whole than for casual, unnecessary digs in otherwise neutral stories.
For a good Julia Child portrayal I will content myself with old clips of Dan Akroyd.
Sorry, but this review is so poorly written it was just cringe worthy. He calls Julie Julia and repeatedly refers to the real Julia as "Childs". Her name was Julia Child and if you can't get something that basic right then your opinion is worthless.
Personally, I thought this movie bit. Yes, Streep was good as Child, but other than certain parts, I was bored snotless. I hated the Julie character, and I usually love Amy Adams' work. I also like Stanley Tucci, but found I just didn't care here. The "little jabs" were pretty crappy IMO, and the movie is typical Ephron and typical Hollywood. PASS.
Agreed! Not going to see this ever. They just lost a few dimes from someone who thought it looked good, but now considers not seeing it a statement of self-respect. I used to watch movies a lot and now I might see one once a year at the theater and less than a one hand finger count any other way.
I think the responses about this review were more insightful than the actual review. My verdict? Any conservative here who pays money for this is a self-loathing sucker. Just because it exists doesn't mean you should go see it like some Pavlovian lap dog.
Gina. You're clueless. Get a vocabulary, or better yet, a thesaurus. Then re-read first two sentences. Perhaps diagram them. Or have a literate friend translate.
Right on! Stop paying hard-earned, overtaxed cash to be insulted by petty potentates.
Let me defend J and J to those who hate Republican bashing. Compared to the source material, this movie pulled waaaaay back. I don't know if it was to make it more accessible or just because political bashing was somewhat off-topic.
That said, the movie is supposed to tell the truth. I have news for you, that bloggers and writers in New York who work for the govt have a 100% chance of bashing Republicans. I don't want them to whitewash that narrative out of our culture. It's telling the truth, they're not saying the opinion is true, only that this is what the real life Powell was like. I can't answer for Julie Child, but apparently her husband was questioned by McCarthyites and asked if he was a homosexual. Doesn't shock me, and doesn't mean that McCarthy wasn't right about Communist infiltration.
Come on, Republicans, let the movie breathe a little. This wasn't some wooden, Republican bashing movie that I'm sure Nor Ephron would be capable of. It shows restraint and artistry, and if Hollywood would tone it down to the "Republican bashing" in this movie I'd die a happy man.
I see where you're coming from, but I'm still undecided about the movie. I love Amy Adams, and I like Meryl Streep, but I'm so tired of unneccesary political bashing in pop culture. Just leave the politics out of it altogether, if possible. Truly, the political jabs offend me more than a lot of the sex, violence, and profanity in movies nowadays, because you know they that were put in there in a very conscious attempt to take aim at segments of their audience. Knowing that the real-life Powell feels as she does makes me even more reluctant to put money in her pocket.
Maybe I'll wait till it comes to my neighborhood "dollar" theatre, where at least I can spend less money on it.
Thanks for warming me up. I had been using the promos from the television to do that. I trust the people at Big Hollywood so much that I even take their word for what a great film this is going to be!
Streep was a delight, but the rest of the movie was just fluff. Very thin characters. Amy Adams was totally unlikeable, and that "fight" scene with her husband was laughable. Why do we even care? Ephron has lost her touch, and this is definitely no masterpiece Doug.
As far as the GOP bashing — bravo. Y'all deserve to be bashed, you small-minded idiots.
Great movie and humor galore but the Buick Wagon was a 1950 in 1949??!!!!
Loved it! Very sweet, old fashioned movie. ChickLit/ChickFlick Deluxe!! Streep of course outshone Amy Adams, which proves she can out-act her whether they're in the same scene (as in Doubt) or not. The political comments made sense for the time they were in and the experiences they had–assuming it was an accurate recreation of what the Childs went through–can't really fault their attitudes: to have your loyalty questioned after you served more than honorably during WWII–I'd be pissed, too. In any case, wanted to cook something delicious afterwards. Big Night and Babette's Feast are still superior cooking movies, but this was a cinematic amuse bouche! Bon Appetit!!!
[...] Doug TenNapel at Big Hollywood: This is for Nora Ephron: stop wasting your time at Huffington Post and make more movies. As a married man, you’re one of the few who seem to get marriage… even men in marriage. You seem to like men, which is rare among women writers. As someone who writes graphic novels, you’re one of the few who gets what it’s like to long for a significant project to find its way to publisher. You get the narcissism of working on one’s craft while someone else is in the house being neglected for some great piece of art. As someone who knows his way around the kitchen, you get the love of cooking, experimenting with recipes, even shopping for ingredients. Finally, you get Julia Childs… including details like her love of sending post cards. [...]
The counterpoint between Julie and Julia provides a rare look into legacy. We often see great persons depicted in lavish and heavy-handed film biographies, where the director wants the audience to believe that this person was a vital part in the course of human history. In cases like Ghandi and Malcolm X that thesis can be justified. But does someone like Jim Braddock really need to be portrayed as if he cured the great depression? Ephron portrays the life of Julia Child in a light, breezy tone; acceptable for the life she led. The Julie Powell segments allow us to better appreciate Child because we can see that she not only lived an extraordinary life, but that her legacy indeed affected others.
Read my full review at http://cfilmc.com/julie-julia/
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