Search - Julie & Julia [Blu-ray] on Blu-ray

Interesting that Ephron's other film with Streep was called

John Grabowski | USA | 01/07/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"But actually, rather than too much spice, the problem with this film is blandness, an incredible amount of blandness. I've never before seen a movie with *no* friction, no real conflict, no action--and by "action" I don't mean blowing up Death Stars. Julie & Julia made me think of a scene from, of all things, an episode of Frasier. Niles and Marty somehow get their video rentals mixed up at the store and take each other's movies home. Niles gets a Charles Bronson film, which he's surprised to find suspenseful. "I felt the same way about your movie, My Dinner With Andre," his father chides him. "Talk about suspense. I kept wondering, 'Will they order dessert?' 'Who'll get the check?'"



That pretty much sums up my reaction to Julie and Julia, a film based on not one but two memoirs. It's hard to get excited about a picture where the plot hinges on burned beef or improperly chopped vegetables. Of course I expect stuff like that, and it's in all the ads, but I also thought, as the movie went on, there's be more, that we'd discover something deeper about Julia Child, or maybe even Julie Powell, her imitator. But no, 3/4 of the way into the film and we're still watching Julie stumble through recipes and break into tears when one of them doesn't come out. Nora Ephron, who has a reputation I cannot fathom, directs it all like a half-brained sitcom, broadly and for forced laughs. (You just know a dessert creation she's taking to work for her colleagues is going to go splat on the sidewalk as she's transporting it, don't you?) Now, I didn't expect this to be a Bergman film, but can't we do better than this?



To give just one example: Julie's boyfriend, whose purpose in the movie is little more than to cheer Julie on, has a mild fight with her at one point and leaves. Now, she could have decided to give up cooking: imagine her throwing Julie Child's cookbook into the dumpster and saying on her blog that she gives up. (I know this didn't really happen, but something has to spice this story up.) Imagine her mother trying to talk her back into it, only to hear her say No, she's decided, she's a failure. Again. Then in a heartwarming moment, boyfriend returns--with a present: he's rescued the cookbook from the dumpster, cleaned it up, and gift wrapped it. He hands it back to her, and she resolves to start cooking again, right then and there, at one in the morning or whatever. Okay, I know that's a big "Hollywood moment" in itself, but it's better than what actually happens, which is almost nothing. She even tells her mother she's not really done with cooking, so you know nothing's really at risk. The story just trudges on.



Many critics have at least praised Streep's end of it, for her channeling of Julia Child. While she does her usual admiral job, at the same time when it was over I couldn't help think that even her performance was one-dimensional. I'm sure Ms. Child wasn't chipper falsetto voice and awkward mannerisms all the time, but that's what we see on the screen, whether she's hosting her TV show or making love to her husband, whose purpose in this film is little more than to cheer her on. (There's a throw-away bit about some McCarthyism witch-hunting that's gone in the blink of an eye.) I would have like to see Meryl's take on JC in her more intimate moments of self-doubt or reflection. Instead we get a performance that's largely impersonation rather than exploration.



Some impressive people worked on this film. Ann Roth is the finest costume designer there is right now (excepting maybe Sandy Powell). Alexandre Desplat, who gave us one of the most memorable film scores in recent years (Birth), provides the music. Scott Rudin is down as one of the producers, always a good sign. Their giant talents don't seem well-utilized by Ephron. The film is shot like a TV show, mostly in medium shots. It ping-pongs rather predictably between the two stories, trying to cement really trivial elements common to them both. There's a certain absurdity to the obsession with *food* that the film, in its quest to take all this so seriously, just misses. In one scene Julie is so excited that someone is coming to dinner at her house. This is built up and then we cut away just before she reveals the person, to build up suspense. Yet when we return to Julie's story and discover the name, we've never heard of her and Julie admits that even though the woman is a "food legend" two months ago she hadn't either. I think it'd have been funnier to punch that up, as in, He: Who's that? She: I don't have the slightest idea either, but I hear she's important! Instead Ephron seems to think we are supposed to get all excited about this person. She seems to think her audience is exclusively trendy Manhattanite foodies. And even they get very little "food porn." There's actually few shots of luscious food being prepared in this movie, and as Roger Ebert correctly observes, Julie's husband just seems to gobble down whatever he gets, grateful that, at midnight on a worknight, he's finally getting something to eat. (I won't even go into the fact that I don't buy this story actually happened. 524 recipes in 365 days? Even if you never get sick or have an off-day, that's almost two recipes a day. Some of them require hours and hours of prep-time. And she held a full-time job. I'll just be charitable and say I am pretty confident she skipped over at least a few items. I have a feeling that's the reason in real life Julia Child was not enamored with Miss Julie. She seemed to regard the whole blog as little more than a publicity stunt.)



Ultimately I think J&J says more about the age we live in than anything about Julie *or* Julia. We seem so desperate for celebrities in this internet age that we get excited about people who do rather trivial things. Yes, I think cooking all 524 recipes in the Julia Child cookbook is, when all is said and done, trivial. We are starved for heroes, so much so that we have to manufacture so many of them. When we do get a real one on occasion (Sully Sullenberger) we overdose on him. So we fill up the vacuum with talentless reality stars, over-the-hill rockers, and people like Julie Powell, who judging by reaction to her second book is already past her 15 minutes.



The movie's transfer to disk looks just fine. There were supplements, but I had absolutely no interest. I'm glad that, at 60, when most major stars are forced into retirement, Meryl Streep is still working regularly. I just wish there were more projects out there worthy of her talent."