I missed “Julie & Julia” when it was first released … kind of on purpose. Meryl Steep’s acting of late — well, the last 15 years,  has become increasingly unbearable to sit though — which is why God invented Redbox. For a buck, I’ll try most anything — except sushi.

Surprisingly, both me and the misses (whose birthday is today — Happy Birthday, Pretty Wife!) were immediately drawn into what started out as a well-structured and charming based-on-a-true-story about two women in two different eras learning to love the art of cooking and coming of age as writers. 

Set in post-war France, Streep plays Julia Child. She’s married to an American diplomat (the always superb Stanley Tucci) and finds herself increasingly restless with all the time she has on her hands. In love with the local cuisine, she decides to fill the hours with a French cooking class and the rest as they say is history.

Set in post 9/11 New York (specifically 2002), Amy Adams (channeling Meg Ryan in a big way) is Julie Powell (who wrote the novel upon which the film is based), a frustrated bureaucrat with a loving husband and an unfinished manuscript who decides she needs a project that will help her to learn some self-discipline. That task ends up being cooking her way through all 524  of Julia Child’s recipes over the course of 365 days, and blogging about it at Salon.com.

Throughout, the film cuts back and forth between both stories, connecting the lives of the two women as they share somewhat similar struggles to discover their voice and a place in the world with the help of supportive and patient husbands. If you look too closely, you’ll see how trite the stakes are. But like I said, this is a mainstream film aiming to take you away into a couple hours of escapism. To Ephron’s credit, she doesn’t pretend any of this matters, but for a director working in an industry we’re told constantly is driven only by profit and the desire for big box office, she sure went out of her way to needlessly alienate conservatives.

The gratuitous Republican bashing gets off to a grand start early in the second act during a reunion scene with Julia and her sister. The whole point of this scene is not to move the main story but to let us know that Julia’s father is a “Pasadena Republican” and supporter of the dreaded Senator Joseph McCarthy. This of course is the set up. The punchline occurs later when we meet the old man, are reminded again of his Republicanism,  and discover that he is nothing more than a one-dimensional caricature of a stuffy, harumphing, disapproving right winger.

Peppered throughout, as well, are awkward moments of exposition to assure moviegoers that each one of our likable and sympathetic characters are Democrats.

Later, things really go off the rails when an out-of-nowhere subplot develops involving Julia’s husband and his awful persecution at the hands of those awful red-baiters. Because it never goes anywhere and has zero connection with the main story, both the dark and self-important tone and the self-conscious left-wing proselytizing of these shoe-horned scenes stop the film in its tracks.

For anyone who pays attention, it’s obvious that throughout Hollywood there’s a commandment nailed to every studio gate that reads: Thou Shalt Not Make A Movie Set In The 1950s Without A Tired And Cliched Joseph McCarthy Subplot. For Hollywoodists this commandment is a twofer. Not only does it present an opportunity to bash the right but there’s no subject our modern-day filmmakers are more in love with than themselves.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the end of Ephron saving money on Western Union to deliver her gratuitous anti-Republican messages to audiences who were promised a fluffy summertime couple of hours. Just as the story wraps up, Julie is called into her bureaucratic bosses office for phoning in sick when it was obvious to everyone that she wasn’t. After gently admonishing her for not being honest with him, he reminds her that “a Republican would’ve fired you.”

Julie obviously agrees and we’re left to wonder why what we’re told is an industry driven only by money would go so far as to damage the quality of a $40 million product just to childishly insult half the customers.

BEST PICTURE – DRAMA

Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious
Up In the Air

BEST PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

(500) Days of Summer
The Hangover
It’s Complicated
Julie & Julia
Nine

BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE

Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
James Cameron – Avatar
Clint Eastwood – Invictus
Jason Reitman – Up In The Air
Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds

BEST ACTOR - DRAMA

Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart
George Clooney – Up In The Air
Colin Firth – A Single Man
Morgan Freeman – Invictus
Tobey Maguire – Brothers

BEST ACTOR – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Matt Damon – The Informant!
Daniel Day-Lewis – Nine
Robert Downey Jr. – Sherlock Holmes
Joseph Gordon-Levitt – (500) Days Of Summer
Michael Stuhlbarg – A Serious Man 

BEST ACTRESS  – DRAMA

Emily Blunt – The Young Victoria
Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side
Helen Mirren – The Last Station
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Gabourey Sibide – Precious

 BEST ACTRESS – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Sandra Bullock – The Proposal
Marion Cotillard – Nine
Julia Roberts – Duplicity
Meryl Streep – It’s Complicated
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR 

Matt Damon – Invictus
Woody Harrelson – The Messenger
Christopher Plummer – The Last Station
Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Penélope Cruz – Nine
Vera Farmiga – Up In The Air
Anna Kendrick – Up In The Air
Mo’nique – Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire
Julianne Moore – A Single Man

BEST ANIMATED FILM

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess And The Frog
Up

FULL LIST CAN BE FOUND HERE

Streep is one of those rare thespians who truly morphs into the character she is playing. You forget for a while that you are watching Meryl Streep (as opposed to never forgetting it’s Tom Cruise in “[insert film title here]“), and for that she deserves heaps of praise.  But her off-screen silliness is ripe for mocking.

Take, for example, her declaration during a promotional interview for “Julie & Julia” that she was “disappointed” in Child because 20 years ago, Child refused to take part in Streep’s efforts to get organic produce into supermarkets:

“She was very resistant and she brushed us off quite brusquely,” the Oscar-winning actress recalled. “She sent word back that she didn’t have anything to say on the subject, and she really resisted making a connection between the high fat diet of a heavily laden cordon bleu-influenced cuisine and cholesterol levels. I remember being so disappointed that she was in the thrall of something called the American Council for Science and Health, which was a front organisation for agro-businesses and petrochemical businesses.

“They seduced Julia into giving them money, so she was on the other side for a while. Eventually I think she came around, though.”

How dare she!

I guess Streep didn’t read this bit in the New York Times obituary for Child:

Mrs. Child was always a star, never a spokeswoman. She prided herself on not granting endorsements because she was devoted to public television, and she was not afraid to mock corporate contributors to her advertising-free programs. She once demonstrated how to break off a part on a Cuisinart food processor to make it less cumbersome to use even as the manufacturer’s representatives sat in the audience. And she was known to sue to prevent a restaurant from advertising that it was one of her favorites.

And according to this, Child only accepted $50 per show for her series “The French Chef,” donating the rest of her salary to WGBH, the PBS station from where the series originated.

Hmmm…

You know, Streep’s starring role in the alar scare of 1989 caused American apple growers to lose plenty of money, despite evidence that there was nothing to worry about. But never mind; it was all for a good cause – she, like many actors, wanted to ward off the perception that she was ”just an actor” and so decided to throw herself into the environmental movement. Rachel Carson would be proud.

Streep’s disappointment in Child’s unwillingness to go along with her schemes didn’t stop her from cashing in on the cooking doyenne’s name, however. While I don’t know how much she earned for her turn in “Julie & Julia,” I do know that over the past year, she earned $24 million, making her the third highest paid actress in American film.

Also, the studio behind “Julie & Julia” is Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures is a – gasp – corporation. Does that mean Meryl Strep is in the thrall of big business too? Is she some kind of corporate tool or shill? After all, she didn’t earn her cool $24 million starring in indie projects. Some food for thought, no? Bon appetit!

Like I said before, Streep is an amazing actress. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?

“Julie & Julia” follows the amusingly parallel lives of chef Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep), who achieved worldwide fame while revolutionizing the art of cooking starting in the ‘50s, and Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a young New York City woman searching for identity in 2002. Powell longs to be a successful writer like her friends and yet is trapped processing insurance claims from victims of the World Trade Center attacks.

Yet two things keep Powell happy: her loving and supportive husband, played by Chris Messina, and her passion for cooking. When she hears her friends talking about launching blogs, her husband convinces her to launch her own blog about cooking. Julie rises to the challenge by deciding to cook every recipe in Julia’s landmark tome “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” within a year – meaning she’ll have to cook 524 exquisite recipes in 365 days and live to blog about it daily.

As she embarks on this culinary quest, Julie learns more about Julia’s own personal life and her parallel loving marriage to her diplomat husband Paul (Stanley Tucci). Julie also gains confidence even as the strain of finishing her goal adds occasional strain to her marriage.

“Julie & Julia” deftly moves between the past and the present in a true screenwriting feat that draws one parallel after another between the two women separated by both an ocean and five decades of life experience. Ephron’s dialogue is crisp and fits both time periods to a T, while its depiction of two happy marriages in which no one’s secretly gay or committing adultery must set a Hollywood record for the modern era.

The film’s traditional moral values (not only is this a movie you could take Grandma to, she’ll likely wind up taking you) carry over into its traditional filmmaking qualities with sterling performances from the four lead actors (Streep could get a Supporting Actress nom, while this could lead to star-making roles for the previously little-known Messina). The exquisite cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt makes dozens of dishes spring to vivid life on the screen, and is sure to leave viewers craving a hearty meal after they leave the theater.

“Julie & Julia” isn’t hip or edgy, but viewers of all ages will appreciate a solid and sterling main course of a film over the quickly forgotten appetizers offered by the much weaker fare to be found in this summer’s multiplexes.