Julie & Julia Movie Download

7 / 10

Too much Julie, not enough Julia…but still worth seeing.
This film is about two parallel journeys—Julia Child’s creation of a magnificent cookbook and Julie’s following all the recipes in the book in one harried year. The story was set, at times, in the present and much of it consisted of Meryl Streep doing a magnificent impersonation of Ms. Child—so good that at times it was quite touching and beautiful.

I liked that this movie chose an unusual method to tell the story by bouncing back and forth from Julie’s life in the present to Julia Child’s life in the 1940s and 50s. The problem for me, however, was not the style of telling the story but that I felt little, if any, connection to Julie and really wanted to know so much more about Julia. Maybe some of this is because my wife, like Julia Child, is an author and it just seemed like Julie was piggybacking off Ms. Child’s success. In other words, Julie didn’t really DO anything of her own and made a name for herself solely by recreating recipes by another person. This seemed to go far beyond just ‘fan fiction’ and on top of this, I really didn’t like this character all that much—though, with Amy Adams in this part, it’s hard to hate her because of Adams’ bubbly and nice persona.

So why, despite this major complaint, did I still give the movie a 7? Well, the portions with Meryl Streep deserved a 10—they were wonderful and I really, really wanted to see a lot more of this. In fact, I wish the whole Julie plot had been removed and it simply been the story of Julia Child….PERIOD. I would have loved to have heard more about Ms. Child’s pain in not being able to have children as well as see more about her loving and sweet relationship with her husband. These portions in the movie, though WAY TOO BRIEF, were quite touching and made me shed a few tears. As for Amy Adams, she did a good job with what she was given, but she wasn’t given much. Her character seemed shallow and a bit self-involved. Think about it…this lady was willing to lose her husband over a dream that, to me, seemed silly and not terribly important. All too often, I found myself hating this character—and wanting to see so much more of Streep as Julia Child. Plus, I really wanted to know WHY Ms. Child did NOT approve of Julie’s blog. I think I can guess why, but just glossing over this briefly near the end seemed unsatisfying.

Overall, this is a very, very well-crafted story with great acting and direction…but a story that seemed inadequate and could have used a re-working…without Julie.Read More