If you’ve ever been to a Weight Watchers meeting one of the first things you are told is to never, ever go to the supermarket when you are hungry.  The same should be said for seeing the film Julie & Julia which opens today in almost 3000 theatres (more than were estimated last week.)  Julie & Julia is hands down the women’s movie of the summer and it could cause many a weight watchers member to fall off the wagon.  While I enjoyed the film a lot, the parts that star Meryl Streep as Julia Child soar whereas the parts that star Amy Adams as Julie Powell the woman who became a blogger before most any of us knew what blogging was feel flat.  It almost feels like Adams is in the black and white scenes of The Wizard of Oz and Streep is in the color scenes.

I don’t blame Adams.  Her character Julie Powell is going through a crisis, not knowing what the hell to do with her life right after 9-11, and to top it off she worked answering questions about 9-11 issues yet had virtually no power to help anyone who called her.  Everyone here in NY was depressed in 2001 and 2002.  So she took up butter and Julia Child and also this new medium of communication, blogging to try and get some of her mo back.  And she does.

Meryl Streep as Julia Child is in Paris with her husband Paul (played by the glorious Stanley Tucci) who is a US government civil servant.  She’s also floundering and takes up cooking because she loves to eat.  Through Streep we see how much Child loved life, loved Paris and loved her husband (how nice is it to see adults having a real relationship on screen?) And she discovered she loved cooking.  Loved it.  One of the things I admire about the film was seeing this woman discover her competency at something that she really didn’t know if she would be good at.  She grows in strength through the film while Adams seems to lose strength in her journey to cook her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Also worth the price of admission is a fantastic scene with Jane Lynch playing Streep’s sister.  Nora Ephron wrote the script from both Child and Powell’s books.  Overall, I love the premise and she gets points for effort but she is so clearly biased in favor of Streep that at times I felt bad that when I was watching the Julie Powell parts because all I kept thinking is when will Meryl be back on screen again?

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