Quick summary: Julie is a government worker that starts her blog about cooking all recipes from Julia Child's cookbook as a way to pull through her mundane life.
My reaction: It is an interesting take on Julia Child we know mixed with humor and drama.
It's after 9/11 and Julie Powell works at her office taking calls from victims of 9/11 about insurance and assistance. Her self esteem runs low when her snobby friends all have high paying jobs while she lives with husband and cat at an apartment in Queens, New York. Julie's greatest role model is the famed Julia Child and aspires to cook all the recipes from her cookbook as a way to prove herself. She creates the blog, Julie & Julia, and blogs about the foods she makes. While this goes on, the movie will travel back the timeline of Julia Child exploring the struggles she had in Paris to make her cookbook come true. Julie finds always inspiration from Julia and constantly compares her life with Julia's various struggles and celebrations.
Meryl Streep put on a convincing performance on screen of a Julia Child that we know and love. The high musical voice that Julia has was reenacted well and Streep portrayed a very positive and whimsical cook. In the film, it shows Julia as a housewife unlike other housewives at the time. She was bored and decided to take up a challenge no other housewife had; take a professional culinary class. While her male colleagues may snicker and snigger at the fact she's the only woman in the class, Julia did not give up. She became more engrossed with food which she loved to eat so much just as Julie in the present day became more engrossed with cooking as a therapeutic activity.
With Julie performed by Amy Adams, is a woman who wants more out of her mundane life and trying to break out of the cycle of never finishing things. Her dream was to be a writer and with her new cooking blog, Julie is determined to be an accomplished writer. Her snobby Cobb Salad "friends" all rose to admirable positions at work which put a lot of pressure on her in addition to moving into a rather small and humble apartment. Julie's worship of Julia gets out of hand and Julie breaks down over failed recipes. While this may happen, her husband and a couple of good friends and readers support her on her blog just like Julia's husband had supported her through her hard times.
Overall I think it had a great story that seemed very real. The protagonist could be any of us in the working class with a dream and an idol to look up to. It's so much about the food, but how some foods became metaphors for certain events. For example, the lobster that Julie was afraid of was could be read as the confrontation of her fears as a writer or a fear of failure. As for Julia from the past, she's become such an icon because she took French cooking which was renowned for its meticulous process and broke it down into simpler pieces for the American audience. From the movie, you can tell she was such a strong woman as when she went into emotional turmoil. She didn't go into a physical outbursts like Julie had and Julia was very lucky to have her husband, Paul, support her all the way. The film touches a lot upon the drama between spouses and how relationships grow from that. If I had to compare the loves in the story, I would say they are akin to fire. It burns with affection and out of anger it singes the flesh.
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