I love Nora Ephron. I find her so funny. Her six word biography? "Secret to life--marry an Italian."
That being said, a lot of her movies just, lack something. I loved When Harry Met Sally (she was nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay) and You've Got Mail was one of my favorite childhood movies... but everything else I've watched from her had an issue either with the ending or with the execution.
Point being... her female characters just aren't strong enough. (For one, after Harry Met Sally, she relied too much on the pixie cuteness of Meg Ryan, who didn't have quite the backbone I wanted in a female actress.) What I prefer, instead, is her optimistic outlook on lovers and relationships, exactly the thing that gives Julie & Julia the glimmer it needed to work. And it works, in a lopsided fashion.
Obviously Meryl Streep is a revelation (she always is). But her characterization of Julia Child can drop so quickly into caricature, if not for the moments of tender, real appreciation of actual food (real food, foodie food) and her husband. There was so much love between her and Stanley Tucci, who was a passable Paul Child... but perhaps a little too doting. His character could've stood up to more development.
On the other side, the Julie side was barely worth it. Even Amy Adams could not give her more zest. She moaned and groaned and chirped and klutzed her way around, but none of it was endearing. Perhaps that was a problem in the script or the source material, as Amy Adams trades on being endearing. Occasionally there were moments where I felt for her--in the cubicle, trying to have a life beyond listening to tragic 9/11 stories--but more often Ephron does not treat her narcissistic neglect of her husband with any nuance that gave us compassion for her. Instead, I sided with the husband (played beautifully by Chris Messina), though he was also even less of a sketched out character than Paul Child.
At any rate, like many other reviewers before me, we would've preferred more Julia Child and less Julie. There was just more love for Julia's world--we see contemporary Julie the blogger go through "real" situations of disappointment from the weather and marital spats... but all seem filmed with a sardonic wink, a kind of relaxed boredom.
Julie & Julia: worth watching, but only on DVD. Unless you're a foodie.
