Julie Powell [Amy Adams] is turning thirty and questioning what she’s done with her life. She decides to take on a project and titles it ‘The Julie/Julia Project’. She created a blog on the internet way back in 2002 and decides to cook her way through Julia Childs’ [Meryl Streep] cook book. At the same time we get the story of how Julia Childs who plays a bored housewife to a government employee, Paul Child [Stanley Tucci], becomes a master of the French Cuisine and eventually publishes one of the biggest cook books on French Cuisine.
So the question I ask myself, as I pay my JA$600 – roughly $6.75 US – to go see this film, is what do I expect to like going in? I already know that I have an unhealthy obsession with Amy Adams and I already know that Meryl Streep is one of the greatest actresses still working today, but at the same time as a person that has trouble boiling an egg I know I will almost want to kill myself staring at some of the meals that are going to be in full focus on the screen. I have to say that even though Meryl Streep defeats Ms. Adams in the acting department of the film I definitely enjoyed Amy Adams section of the film more than Meryl. While Meryl does her best to bring to life the character of Julia Childs, which I’ve actually never heard of before, who is no more than a great cartoon character for cooking, Amy Adams’ character reminded me a lot of myself. I forgot to pay attention to the fact that she has friends or a husband or a job and focused completely on her writing/blogging. I found myself intrigued every time she sat at her laptop writing her posts to her readers feeling all those things she felt, feeling like she’s sending her thoughts out there in the massive space that is the internet and unsure of whether it would find anyone. I also found myself falling in love with the character while she was jumping for joy at every comment she got from the first to the last and that’s how I feel with every comment I receive – even though I haven’t reached the levels of traffic/comments that The Julie/Julia Project did. I loved how whenever she was writing you heard that narration so that you knew her posts were meant to sound like she was sharing her experiences and thoughts and sometimes I wish that is how this blog sounds, even though I’m not entirely sure about that you guys can let me know as readers if it comes off that way or not.
My biggest problem with this movie is that even though I enjoyed Julie Powell’s character more than Julia Childs, Julie Powell didn’t feel like she had a proper story arc. She decided to spend a year doing this project and it gave her highs and lows but it didn’t seem like the project helped her life. I definitely heard that line of dialogue where she says how Julia pulled her out of the rut and you can see that she had some progression in her career but did a year of cooking, eating and blogging do it? Possibly, but I’d like to think that even without the project all the things that happened for her in the end would’ve happened anyway. Julia Childs on the other hand has the better arc for sure, as it tells the story of her going from boring wife to being a great cook who brings French Cuisine to America. Her half of the film felt like a regular biopic where we see her overcome all the hurdles a character would in that scenario.
So in the end while wondering as what to call this movie, I would like to dub it being better than expected but not anything that I’m willing to rave about. In a month I will probably forget about the movie completely and not even think twice about watching it again when it hits cable and I’m flicking through channels on a Saturday morning between football matches. However, this is a nice date movie since it does cater to the female audience and is light hearted enough about its topic that it can draw in the men like how Iron Chef can.
IMDB says 7.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes says 75%
I say 7.0/10
PS. I find it pretty awesome that The Julie/Julia Project is still online and I found myself reading through a lot of Julie Powell’s old posts and liking it a lot.