Julie & Julia had a good starting point for an idea for a film. With a biopic story based around a famous person, usually there’s a certain formula to how they can be presented and staged to the point where even if the situations feature different beats, the repetition of certain things can become a bit tiring after a while. With this film, not only doing the biopic on a chef of all people but on two people simultaneously that connect to one another is a good way of shrinking down the issues that come with biopics and allows for two stories for the price of one. Whether or not the final product would totally work was unsure but that did not stop director Nora Ephron from creating it in 2009, making Julie & Julia the last film she made before her tragic passing. New York worker Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams) finds her daily life tiresome and makes herself better by cooking recipes from her favorite chef, Julia Childs (played by Meryl Streep). Wanting to spice her life up, she decides to write a blog and plans to create all the recipes in Child’s’ book over the year. While this is happening, the film cuts back to the 1950s and shows the culinary origins of Childs’, including the realization of her talent and the creation of her most famous cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Based on two separate books; ‘’My Life in France’’ which is Child’s autobiography written by Alex Prud’homme, and a memoir by Powell, ‘’Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously’’, Julie & Julia presents these real life events with a lot of fluff and airiness but with little intelligence or complexity behind it. Regardless of how either women were in real life or how their stories actually played out, the film does a stronger job making something simplistic and cutesy rather than telling an interesting true story.

A biography on the famous Chef, Julia Childs is a good idea for a film; with such a cheery yet strange presence on-screen during her various TV outings and cooking shows and having various strong recipes within her incredible big cook that was originally created to give American women an English version of a French cookbook. That mixed with the rest of her life seemed like it would work well enough to be a motion-length picture, but combined it with Julie Powell’s real mission to recreate very dish within a years-time fits together nice enough, even if the two story’s don’t really connect or even mirror each other that strongly. The pacing of both stories is fairly even and neither gets more screen time than the other, it feels like the pretty good balance and both stories with their own ups and downs that are not identical to the other. The atmosphere of this movie is incredibly ‘’Twee’’, in that it shines in this incredibly strong feeling of perkiness and perfection, like living in a flawless world. While this could somewhat match if the story matched this energy, but a real-life story does require a touch more of a grounded atmosphere in order to be taken seriously. This tone makes it hard for people to believe if what is being shown is real because it doesn’t feel like real life, except when the movie tries to throw something real in and it feels incredibly out of nowhere and of a completely different tone. While it does not support the serious stuff, it works well whenever the star attraction (the food) comes into play; when this overly positive and cheery attitude elevates the pleasantness of the food rather than dilutes it.

What also comes with this almost pre-school level atmosphere also comes a certain over-the-top level that comes with the performances and some more so than others stand out far more because of it. Meryl Streep in this movie is essentially being Dame Edna through the entirety of this film with the strongly crazy voice that is incredibly eye-piercing and highly strung. Since the real Julia Child’s was known for speaking like that, the performance is at least authentic enough to excuse how hoaky and even annoying the performance really is. Amy Adams comes across as a different kind of annoying; the character’s ‘’first world problems’’ attitude and pretty basic delivery doesn’t make her very connectable as a person and the goal of finishing off a cook book in a year is a cute idea and allows for some great looking cooking and food, but doesn’t make people feel like they’re anything risky on the line. Both stories suffer from a lack of investment due to the lack of stacks throughout the entire film; there’s no issues outside of little things and whatever ‘’drama’’ goes on is either quickly resolved, not addressed again, or just comes out of nowhere and impacts nothing. There’s a nice touch with the relationship between the two not being very positive towards the end and there’s even a nice message about how images of famous people can be as impactful to one’s mindset as the real thing, but again its not fully realised.

The production design for this movie is very clean but also very prominent in color. The pastel colors and bricked laid streets of Paris offer a nice visual eye and the streets of the present day look appropriate for the time period, the apartment looks like a proper apartment from Manhattan. Sometimes the colors in the Child’s sections can be a bit too pronounced, much like her as a person the time period in the way its displayed is very homely and slightly rough like you would imagine a home-style cook book would look like, so the style evens out the over-the-top angle to at least feel in character with what the film has been doing up until this point. The movie wants to be a comedy first so that leaves and also explains the less-than-perfect handling of the story and unfortunately the film is not very funny either. While there is a great inclusion with an SNL skit of Julia Child’s which is legitimately hilarious, everything else is more ‘’unfortunate’’ than funny; like a mild inconvenience has occurred instead of something actually funny, or something ‘’slightly’’ backhanded has been said instead of going full force on a one-liner. The music is also incredibly chirper, bright, full of whimsy and charm and that over-indulgence can become pretty tiring after a while.

Julie & Julia could have been a lot better as much as it could have been a lot worse. With the way this story as laid out along with the overly bouncy and unrealistic atmosphere, no real sense of humor and pretty annoying leads, this could have been a complete train wreck of a film. But thankfully with a cool idea for a film, decent pacing between both sides, and a concept and message that while not portrayed great is still an interesting one, the movie turns out passable at the least. It doesn’t work for everybody, it could come across as pretty disingenuous and overall can be a bit annoying at times, but at least the film at least gives food lovers plenty of great looking grub being made.