DVD Reviews

Julie and Julia

• Rating:
• Director: Nora Ephron
• Starring: Amy Adams
• Details: US/123mins 12A

Essentially an elongated cooking show, with a flimsy parallel narrative thrown in, Julie & Julia may be a pleasant enough experience for those with interests in culinary history, but everyone else may find themselves bored (and hungry) waiting for something to happen. Sleepless in Seatlle helmer Nora Ephron directs for her own script, but just can't seem to find the meat within the story. While the dishes on show look mouth-wateringly good, the film about the dishes is executed with a pedestrian hand as the awkward story jumps fifty odd years every few minutes.
The, apparently true, story sees Amy Adams' unfulfilled government worker, Julie, trying to figure out just what she can do with her life. She goes for lunches with her successful friends as they chat on their fancy mobile phones about million dollar deals, then goes back to her cubicle in her dead-end job as a middle-level government employee and curses her existence. Meanwhile, in 1949, future household name Julia Child is falling in love with Paris, while her husband is placed there working for the United States Embassy. While he's at work, she struggles to fill her time, but soon signs on to attend a French cooking class, where she learns how to muster up some seriously decadent grub. While Julie blogs about her attempts to mimic Child's famous recipes in 2002, Julia is struggling to have her book published decades earlier.
There are many things that don't work about this shamelessly slight production, but we should at least be able to expect two top drawer performances from the two finest actresses of their respective generations. Alas, Julia & Julia doesn't for a second give our leading ladies the material they deserve. The blame has to land purely at the door of Ephron, who stages proceedings like two separate films, stuck together with cheap glue. There is no real reason why we're given both (pointless) stories, and by the end, you'll be craving some sort of conclusion. Frustratingly, it never comes, and takes far too long going nowhere.
At two hours long, this could've concentrated purely on the life Child and been an interesting affair. As it stands, it's a futile exercise in food porn, that never stops being anything other than fluff.

Review by Mike Sheridan