The following is a guest post by a friend of mine who is the biggest movie buff I know. I asked him to see the movie and send me a review, so here it is. Personally, I’d like to see him start a movie themed blog, so maybe if we get some feedback he’ll do it.

I’ve not seen the movie yet, but plan on doing so soon. Please don’t read if you plan on seeing the movie or go ahead, but don’t blame me if something in the review spoils it for you. You have been notified!

Julie & Julia

“Is there anything better than butter? You can never have enough”.

Based on Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, and My Life in France
by Julia Child, Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia offers up eye popping dishes and narratives to fulfill even the heartiest of nostalgic appetites.  A before and after account of a developing daily blogger, Julie & Julia delves to and fro into the later day chronicle of a “Lower Manhattan Development Coordinator” Julie Powell . In searching for meaning in her day to day world, Julie tries to make sense of her non-empowering vocation while handling suitably irritated sufferers of 9/11.

Feeling her life to be insignificant, Julie (played by the always enchanting Amy Adams) comes to the crossroads of disillusionment after having lunch with her disaffected friends and their steady rise up the corporate ladders of success. Realizing she needs a focus and goal, Julie takes Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume 1) book to heart and sets out to create 524 recipes in 365 days while sharing her experiences with French gourmet cooking in the blogosphere.

While our contemporary narrative is set in present day Queens (minus a few years), we regularly dissolve back in time to the early prime of Julia Child in a charmingly authentic 1940’s Paris. Julia seeks her own sense of purpose by trying to keep her day to day life busy while being married to Paul Child (a foreign diplomat for the US), played by the always gifted Stanley Tucci. Paul Child readily endorses whatever Julia sets out to accomplish; beginning with hat making followed by bridge lessons, she is constantly surrounded with the delicacies of French cuisine. Deciding that she would like to learn French cooking, she enrolls at the world renowned cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu (French for “blue ribbon”). During her stay at Le Cordon Bleu, Julia (played to the hilt by the chameleonic Meryl Streep) becomes bored with her female compatriots. Thus she embarks on a more challenging position with her male counterparts in which she begins to eat heartily at a role she was destined to play – that of a gourmet cook.

After developing many pages of her book – along with her collaborators, Julia has the makings of an incredibly large cookbook which no-one seems eager to issue until Knoph publishing takes a chance. After some tweaking of the title, her cookbook is published and Julia Child begins her legendary ascent to the heights of the cooking world. Equally, Julie has become a blog sensation, skyrocketing up Salon’s most-read blogs list. After completing all 523 recipes, she comes to her last day with a brilliant duck recipe if only she can split the duck just right.

Written by the queen of romantic comedies Nora Ephron (screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail and others), Julie & Julia doesn’t offer the ingredient rich fare of a mouth watering Eat Drink Man Woman or Big Night, but what it does put forward is a film of two women at a moment in their lives when the moment is not right and they reach for something more. What would have made this piece more enjoyable would have been more on the construction of all the tasty dishes – and all the tasty items that come with it. – JGB

**1/2 (out of 4) 123 Minutes