“Julie & Julia” Gets It Half-Right

If you believe half-a-movie is better than none, take a chance on “Julie and Julia.” The good half is Meryl Streep playing the awkwardly tall Julia Child, a woman determined to make her bubbly nature count for more than her ungainly appearance.

The unfortunate half is Amy Adams playing Julie Powell, a frustrated and unknown writer who built her opportunistic career on Child’s magnificent reputation. That happened in 2002, after Powell couldn’t get her first novel published.

Once considered one of Amherst’s most talented students with the brightest future, Powell’s writing career was going nowhere eight years after her graduation. Meanwhile all of her girlfriends from college were developing multi-million dollar careers in the business world.

Driven by such intense peer pressure, Powell decided to write a daily blog for a year on what it felt like to prepare every recipe in Child’s eponymous “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Apparently Powell did have a personable writing style, which attracted large numbers of readers and eventually the attention of the New York Times.

Writer/director Nora Ephron combined that story with Child’s own memoirs as told in “My Life in France.” Streep the master of difficult accents is perfectly cast, catching not only Child’s blue blood New England accent but also her gawky body language.

Adams was totally miscast, however, as the driven Powell. The actor is best known for her quirky roles in “Junebug,” “Enchanted” and “Sunshine Cleaning.” This role, however, does not call for quirky.

She also had great chemistry working opposite Streep in the Catholic drama “Doubt.” But at no time in “Julie & Julia” do Adams and Streep share a scene. They don’t even share the same time period.

Ephron bounces the story back and forth between Child, the wife of an American diplomat in Paris in the early 1950s, and Powell in 2002 blogging her way through that famous cookbook. So we are totally charmed by the Paris part, caught up in Child’s love for French cuisine and her determination to open that Gallic kitchen door for American’s homegrown cooks.

We are totally annoyed by Adams playing such a compulsively self-centered character as Powell. Her portion of the movie grinds by as we keep hoping the next scene will whisk us back to Child in Paris.

“Julie & Julia” is not really a picture for foodies, either. Some of the elegant dishes receive the full cinema fantasy treatment, but none of them compare to the satisfaction of even the smallest scene in “Babette’s Feast,” much less my favorite food movie “Tampopo.”

So for Streep’s many fans, and any others who can’t stay away, see “Julie & Julia” at a matinee. Or wait until it gets to the second-run theaters. In the meantime, check out some video of the real Julia Child being that personable chef on TV.