Julie & Julia

I'm joining the consensus of critical opinion about Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia by stating that it is half a good movie. The half about Julia Child discovering her talent for cooking and co-writing a cookbook that changed the ways Americans thought about food is well done, with yet another smashing performance by Meryl Streep. The other half, about a plucky office drone who decides to make all 524 recipes in Child's book, is a warmed over Lifetime film and a drag on the whole enterprise.

Child was the wife of a career diplomat who, as the film begins, takes a post in Paris in 1949. She is looking for something to do (she was always a woman who worked, the couple met while they worked for the O.S.S., which has led to rumors that she was a spy) and finally lands on taking cooking classes at the Cordon Bleu. Despite some sexist reaction, she flourishes, and eventually meets two French women who are trying to write a French cookbook in English (which apparently didn't exist at the time). With her husband's support, Child works for years to get the book published.

Julie Powell (Amy Adams) has a thankless job fielding the sometimes heartbreaking problems of those affected by the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center. She wants to be a writer, but has a problem sticking with things. She too has a patient husband (Chris Messina) and eventually comes with the idea to write a blog about making all the recipes in Child's book.

This sounds like a good concept, but I'm afraid Ephron isn't a talented enough writer or director to make it work. The sequences involving Powell seem to have been written with a chisel, they are so unsubtle. For example there's a very poorly written scene with Powell having lunch with her much more successful friends (they're always on their cell phones!) and then the obligatory scene in which Adams and Messina have a bad fight and he stalks off. I have no idea how true this is, but even if it were it's too tidy and seems jerry-built.

The Child scenes, though, are much more palatable, but it's not so much for the writing and directing as it is because it's just a better story, and it has the incredible talent of Meryl Streep going for it. I feel bad for Amy Adams, who in review after review is being found wanting when it comes to Streep, which is kind of like being the second-best golfer to Tiger Woods. I will say this, though, Adams is definitely in danger of being typecast as a chirpy, perky woman. In some of her scenes she seems to still be playing the fairy princess in Enchanted. Even when she's having an emotional breakdown she comes across as absurdly adorable. This woman needs to play Lady MacBeth, stat.

Now for Streep. How many more superlatives can be tossed her way? It's only August, but I have a gut feeling this performance will be the one to beat for Best Actress come Oscar time, as the Academy is about due to award her a third Oscar (I think they wanted to last year for Doubt, but had to give one to Kate Winslet first). Only four other actors have won three or more Oscars (not counting honorary awards): Katharine Hepburn with four, and Walter Brennan, Ingrid Bergman, and Jack Nicholson with three. Streep is an actor who works from the outside in, as she starts with Child's distinctive fluty voice but moves beyond impersonation into transformation. She even acts tall (Child was six-two). Other actors have done this (Laurence Olivier started by figuring out his character's walk) but Streep, who has played women from all sorts of places, has made a name as the greatest chameleon in film history.

Credit is also due to Stanley Tucci, who plays Paul Child. Julia Child was not what anyone would consider sexy, but the relationship between Streep and Tucci is a pleasure to watch (and they even get a little frisky in the sheets). There's also a great moment when Child makes a vulgar simile that brings the house down.

I'd like to add that I saw this in a matinee on a beautiful summer day and the theater was more than half full, which is unusual (I almost always see matinees with only a handful of other patrons), and there wasn't a face under twenty-five. It's nice to see adults at the movies, even if they should have gotten a better movie. They all seemed to enjoy it.