Julie & Julia
12A, Nationwide
Fish Tank
15, Nationwide
If you love food, as I do — I even get excited about the meal trolley on planes, and count the number of aisles before it is going to get to me — and if you love Meryl Streep, as anyone in their right mind should, then you are probably already thinking you are going to totally love Julie & Julia, and while you are right, you are only half right. Look, it’s a nice movie and it’s a gentle movie and it’s an old-fashioned movie, and it gives the recipe for beurre blanc, which is never a bad thing, but it suffers just as The Devil Wears Prada suffered: when Ms Streep isn’t on screen, it dies a death and drags horribly.
Written and directed by Nora Ephron as a comedy-drama, it’s based on two sets of memoirs: that of American food writer Julia Child (Streep), who introduced American housewives to French cuisine in the early Sixties, and that of Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a New Yorker who, in 2002, started up a blog documenting her efforts to cook her way through all 524 recipes in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. So it’s two films which, to put it plainly, is one film too many.
Meryl is, of course, a wonder; absolutely lovely as Ms Child who, aside from anything else, was just so physically extraordinary: 6ft 2ins with a Brian Blessed voice, and yet Streep’s portrayal is so tender, affectionate and thoughtful that she never makes her look ridiculous. We’re introduced to her as she arrives in post-war Paris with her adored diplomat husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci). She is a passionate, intelligent woman, but bored out of her mind.
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