Julie, Julia, and Barb

I read Julie & Julia at Christmas last year and quite enjoyed it; it amused me throughout my 24-hour trek to Oregon when I definitely needed the distraction. I was excited for the movie--after all, I liked the source material, and it stars Amy Adams and Meryl Streep! And I did enjoy the movie; more, in fact, than most critics.

The biggest criticism about the movie seems to be that the parts about Julie, the young woman in 2002 who goes through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogs about it, drag. People seem to see her as whiny and find those parts boring; a number would rather just watch a movie with Meryl Streep as Julia Child. Which I might agree with, were the parts in the movie about Julia Child when she worked for the OSS during World War II and not about her learning to cook and attempting to write a cookbook. Meryl Streep was great, of course, and I enjoyed those parts of the movie, but I didn't find them as riveting as I guess a lot of other people.

Maybe it's that I can relate a lot more to Julie than Julia. Whiny? Not particularly. I haven't encountered the scorn of the cubicle that she did and I'm not surrounded by wildly successful friends, but I'm also someone who finds refuge outside of work. It was nice to see a character in a solid relationship, but we also got to see how her drive to get through the cookbook put a strain on that relationship. She came across as eminently human, which isn't necessarily the case with Julia.

One of the biggest contradictions--and one that cannot be explained--is that Julia Child did not appreciate what Julie Powell did. Both the movie and the book include the moment that Julie finds out that Julia didn't think Julie was being "respectful", whatever that means. But the Julia portrayed by Meryl Streep seems to have a sense of humor. True, by that point she was much, much older, and possibly not that familiar with blogs, and she had lost her husband. But the movie doesn't really show Julia as someone with flaws, whereas Julie is definitely flawed.

It's interesting, because in the book Julie & Julia, the Julia parts are weaker by far; Julie does much better writing about herself. But on the other hand, the sections in the book also show Julia and Paul meeting and marrying during the war, so the story (to me) was more interesting than the one in the movie. Obviously, though, Julia learning to cook and writing the book are more pertinent to the movie's story.

In any case, the movie was delightful--all of it. Now, who's up for a cupcake?