4.5 stars out of 5
Julie & Julia, from director/screenwriter Nora Ephron (Sleepless In Seattle, You've Got Mail), is a delicious and satisfying treat. Based on two books, Julia Child's memoir "My Life In France" and Julie Powell's chronicle "Jule & Julia: My Year Of Cooking Dangerously," the film interweaves the two storylines to excellent effect. Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia!, Doubt) is a wonderful Child, arriving in Paris in the late 1940s and learning to cook at Le Cordon Bleu as a way of finding something to do with herself. Child's mannerisms and speech lend themselves to exaggeration - Dan Aykroyd's classic "Saturday Night Live" skit from 1978 (featured in this film) is a good example. But Streep's performance is neither campy nor overplayed, and the picture of Child that emerges is engaging, a strong-minded sensualist with a flinty cast. Amy Adams (Enchanted, Doubt) is equally good as Powell, a young woman in post-9/11 Manhattan, stuck in a job she hates. She finds personal gratification by challenging herself to cook every dish in Child's first cookbook, "Mastering The Art Of French Cooking," over the course of one year, and blogging about her efforts. Ephron nicely balances success and failure in the two stories, and creates a film both sweet and tart, rich but never cloying.