Movie Review-Julie&Julia

ohmygoodness, wonderful!

Two of my favorite actresses, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, and the adorable Stanley Tucci were amazing. Meryl Streep, in her eternal beauty and classiness, captured Julia Child's oooOOOOooooos and 6'2ness without making her into a caricature. And Amy Adams with her wonderfully crooked teeth and whole-hearted earnestness takes the viewer on the desperate journey from secretarial pool to cooking school.

In comparison to the book, the movie is a lot less political, at least in the Julie plot line. And the softening of the complete depth of despairs that in more gastronomical circles is known as aspics, upset me a little just because in the book, Julie Powell's journey is so miserable and triumphant in the end. But the movie is technically not just an adaptation of Julie & Julia, it is also an adaptation of My Life in France, by Julia Child, so this wonderful edition does call for some cuts from the nominal work. Paul and Julia are adorable together, and when she says that her cook book is his too, it shows how beautifully codependent they are on each other and the meals they share.

But the unsung hero of the these two women's lives, the books and the movies is the recipes. We are shown the direct link between the women and how it affected their husbands, friends and lives. But they also touched so many other people, which was beautifully shown in a scene from neither book where Judith Jones, Julia's book editor, cooks Boeuf Bourguignon. This woman, who is not a housewife, but instead a working woman, not in a kitchen, but a publishing house, cooks a stew and falls in love with the idea that she CAN cook. And that is what Julia has done and will continue to do for generations. The movie captures that better than Julia's accent or Julie's struggle and that's why I enjoyed it so insanely much.