If Norah Ephron had better producers around to save her from herself, "Julie & Julia" could have been the movie it wants to be — that is a Julia Child biopic with Meryl Streep doing a fantastic job as the television chef that taught America how to cook.
Rather, "Julie & Julia" represents two very unequal stories battling it out toward a cinematic TKO.
In the lightweight corner sits blogger cook Julie Powell, whose blog-based book about her experiences cooking her way through Julia Child's 1961 cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" Ephron adapted for the movie.
Julie decides to cook the book's 526 recipes over the course of a year while religiously blogging about the experience. Julie (played by the cute-as-a-button Amy Adams) lives in a crumby Long Island City apartment over a pizzeria with her doting husband (played by a severely miscast Chris Messina) when she isn't working a day job that reeks of screenwriter manipulation as an oppressed government phone worker.
In the heavyweight corner stands Meryl Streep thrilling herself and the audience as the larger-than-life Julia Child. Witness Julia Child with her much more believably devoted husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) living in Paris where she, already in her '40s, enrolls at the Cordon Bleu school of cooking and takes to it like a fish to water.
Ephron adapted material from Child's posthumous memoir "My Life in France," and the book proves much stronger source material than that of a young blogger.
Shocker.
Rated PG-13. 123 mins.
