They got it more than half right!
Written: Aug 11 '09 (Updated Aug 11 '09)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, Julia Child's plot was interesting
Cons: The Julie storyline and character was occasionally ok but not compelling
The Bottom Line: While I would have liked more about Julia, there was enough there to justify paying first run retail price. I can recommend this.
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| Saxguy's Full Review: Julie & Julia |
Having been smitten with the previews, Mrs. Saxguy and I knew that we were going to see Julie and Julia when it first arrived. The plot idea was intriguing: the story about Julia Child becoming famous as a French chef and Jule cooking her way through Julia's masterpiece cookbook as a means of personal redemption and career acceleration.
Meryl Streep as Julia did an excellent job. She had the voice and mannerisms, she made herself tall somehow, the voice was excellent, and she was very emotive, whether being the bored diplomatic spouse, eating enthusiastically, chopping mounds of onions to keep up with her male colleagues in culinary school, going from book idea to book project to rejection to publishing, really her entire life.
Stanley Tucci did a great acting job as her loving, supportive husband, Paul. He authentically expressed support for his wife in whatever she wanted to do, unusual for the time, while putting up with transfers and interrogation necessitated by the McCarthy era. He has very nice range as an actor. I remember him being a rather miserable mobster on Wiseguy on TV many years ago.
The character development of Julia Child, first in getting to a culinary school, then in writing a book, then in getting it published after rejection was compelling. The love story between she and her husband was authentic.
The trouble is, the Julie character, played by Amy Adams, was not that compelling to me. I really, really wanted to like her. The concept of a stifled artist (writer) , struggling in a thankless, draining day job, and an equally draining mother, with successful non-friendly friends finding redemption through a quest, should have been compelling. It wasn't. Certainly, their were spots of amusement and poignancy, but most of her character consisted of self-absorbed moments (generally) or weepy, whiny moments. There didn't seem to be much development in her character. I view that as more a script issue than poor acting. Plus, Eric Messina as her husband, wrestled valiantly with the role, basically written as a cartoon character. His role was to support Julie in a saintly manner, except for a brief episode of acting out. He acted competently enough, the problem was the script.
In one sense, I wasn't that surprised that Streep was able to do much more with her part than Adams, as Streep is a veteran, world class actress. In another sense, I WAS surprised, as the primary inspiration for the film was (the real) Julie's book about cooking her way through Julia's book. Julie's book has top billing in the movie name and top billing in the credits. Of course, the inspiration for the Julia section was Julia Child's memoirs as well. However, the inspiration was Julie's and I was disappointed that the character was not that compelling. While the movie came in at a little more than 2 hours, the Julia sections seemed not long enough and the Julie sections were long.
Don't get me wrong - I liked this movie and I was entertained. I LOVED Julia and Paul and I liked Julie in spots. I wonder whether director Nora Ephron fell a little too in love with the Julie character. Nora wrote the screen play. I think with a little more focus on the culinary challenge and a little less focus on Julie's (non-friendly) college friends, her cartoon character husband and her meltdowns, it wouldn't take much to improve the character. In Sex In The City, those women were FRIENDS. The only thing Julie's college friends were really friends with were their cell phones and their ritually ingested Cobb Salads.
I did enjoy the soundtrack, particularly the instrumental and then the vocal rendition of Time After Time, a song I've always loved that I recorded in 1995.
So, Julia and Paul get 5, Julie gets 3 stars, making an average of 4 stars. Paying first run retail price for this movie was worth it.
Thanks for reading. God bless.
I have a new live CD available. Samples are on my profile page.
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Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Feel-good Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Script
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