Julie and Julia; a Movie Review
I want to eat French Food!
This movie was quite simply Bon Apetit! Slow moving but interesting, Meryl Streep does an excellent job of creating a visual Julia Childs with her perfect speech/accent, mannerisms and body language. One thing I wasn't prepared for but was pleasantly surprised with: a history lesson on Ms. Childs throughout the film. I remembered her shows while I was growing up but didn't really get into her humor and her antics until later in life. I always seemed to love the Saturday Night Live para dies on her more than her show. Watching Julie and Julia, I have decided that I missed out on the most important lessons that her show had to offer; that mistakes are okay, humor gets you through everything and love carries you through the good and the bad.
I never knew that she had a wonderful, rock solid marriage. Stanley Tucci plays her sexy, devoted husband in the film and I giggled each time she and her husband would get frisky with each other. He adored her and she him and each was so much their own person, so comfortable with who they were, that they never once felt threatened by each other's accomplishments or failures. The memoirs of the two of them have been published in a book noted in the movie. I found myself a bit envious of the comradery between the two of them and the apparent love they shared for each other. My gal pal that attended the film with me kept making comments as well about their playfulness with each other and their passion.
Amy Adams is darling as Julia; the woman that finds herself working a depressing job and longs to write as she did years before. She and her husband discuss a way she can write without constrictions and they find a blog site where she sets a goal for herself to spend a year cooking over 500 of Julia's recipes and the joys and pains of doing so. She writes herself into the hearts of cooks and readers every where and finds painfully that notoriety has a price. She must decide what is most important to her at that point.
In reality, Julia Childs didn't support this women's blog. She was offended by the use of the "F" word so frequently and felt some disrespect by young Julia. Nonetheless, Julia continues on her journey to self improvement and idolizes Julia and credits her for helping her find herself.
Many parts of this film were laugh out loud entertaining. Mostly because of Meryl's priceless portrayal of Julia and Stanley's portrayal as her husband. There were somber parts as well and one thing that stuck out throughout the film was that the most successful people cannot do it alone. We all need a counterpart. A partner . To keep us focused and to bring us back to the Earth when we believe we are better than we are. Or, the opposite...tell us we are important and successful when we are at our lowest point.
Granted, most of the audience was 47 years old and older when I attended this film . The movie even got a roar of clapping at the end and cheers could be heard. A generational thing? I know not. I do know however, that I felt happy leaving the theater.
A simple movie. A joy of cooking. Lessons on preparing food that you felt you could taste during the movie. A happy ending. What could be better?
