There have been plenty of movies made about instances when ‘worlds collide,’ but I don’t recall ever seeing a film that weaves two true stories together like Julie & Julia. Unique as its dual biopic approach may be, this split biography becomes unbalanced both in time allotment and level of interest. While it may not exactly be a case of too many cooks in the kitchen, Julie & Julia isn’t quite as delicious as advertised.The main component of the film focuses on Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a call center worker for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The year is 2002, not long after the September 11 attacks. Looking for some stress relief, Julie decides to cook every single recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking within one year’s time. To help hold herself accountable, she starts a blog about her journey, which develops an unexpected following. The self-inflicted pressure of reaching her goal, along with the assumed pressure of her readers’ expectations, leads to some tense moments in her marriage.
The other component of the film focuses on Powell’s muse- Julia Child. These scenes are set in the 1950s when the Child’s were living in France. Julia (Meryl Streep), bored with day-to-day life enrolls in the famous Le Cordon Bleu to learn French cooking. The experience leads her to collaborate on said cookbook targeted at American housewives. She struggles to earn respect for both herself in the male-dominated profession of cooking as well as the validity and marketability of her book in the eyes of publishers.
The main focus of the film is on Powell and her journey through Child’s book. It’s current, features a popular young star in Adams, and there is love and drama that everyday people can relate to. The only problem is that the average person couldn’t give a crap about Julie Powell. You may have heard of her book by chance but she is little more than someone who found success and landed a book deal thanks to a blog. Sure, the struggles she endured in cooking and saving her marriage are her own, but the only reason anyone would be drawn into her story is because everyone (okay, maybe not those in Generation Z) has heard of Julia Child. Powell may not have intended to use Julia Child’s work to become famous but she certainly owes much of her success to the association with Child.
Therein lies the downfall of the film. If you don’t find Powell interesting, you’ll only have roughly half of a film to enjoy. The film’s target demographic is women, who are usually much less cynical and will probably enjoy watching Powell’s struggle to keep herself together as a working woman and wife. But our culture as a whole has grown more cynical towards faux celebrities who pop up online or on TV despite having little or no actual talent to speak of. Powell was fortunate that her success came before the onslaught of relative nobodies blogging about specific issues or topics and making a killing off of it. This movie, however, came after that wave and is thus open to such criticism.
If you are able to keep Powell’s setting in context, though, you probably won’t have that difficult a time taking it for what it is- a puff piece with a little drama mixed in. After her blog becomes a hit, she develops a bit of a responsibility complex in that she feels a somewhat imagined amount of pressure from her readers to stay on target with her one-year plan. She begins to devote a little too much time to her blog, which understandably irks her husband. Having been involved with a minor web phenomenon myself for a few years, I can understand where Powell is coming from with her need to fulfill audience expectations. But she commits a cardinal sin by letting this perceived pressure control her. Frustrating as it is to watch, it was nice to see they didn’t gloss over this issue.
The Julia Child scenes definitely steal the show. Meryl Streep nails her character’s mannerisms and eccentric voice. Her performance is so spot-on that I don’t think anyone will be able to produce a satisfactory, full-length biopic of Child. It’s a shame that she wasn’t cast for a full biopic of Child but the parts of her life that Julie & Julia focuses on are the key points. We see her struggle in two very significant arenas but, since her name has become legendary, we don’t require much more than what made the final cut.
More of the film focuses on Powell, which is fine (the title is Julie & Julia after all). It’s just ironic that, try as they might to play up the modern success tale, the combined weight of the legendary Julia Child and the stellar Meryl Streep completely overpower the up-and-comer Powell and the then relatively new Adams. If anything, you would want it to be the other way around- get a big name leading lady to make Powell significant and important while perhaps finding a solid, pedigreed supporting actress to create a star-making performance out of the Child role.
Inventive in its approach, Julie & Julia falters in the execution. The Julia Child sequences are rich with Hollywood biopic glory while the Julie Powell segments occasionally border on Lifetime movie of the week territory. The end result is a cinematic confection that’s sweet enough to get a recommendation.
RATING: 3 out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment