Julie & Julia: Will You Still Be Hungry Afterward?

By Mad Dog
Published: Aug 06, 2009

Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia opens this weekend, aloft on the hopes of foodies, chick flick lovers and Ms. Ephron’s omnivorous publicity machine. I haven’t seen it, but from the trailer, I might be tempted to conclude that the film’s potential stumbling block is Meryl Streep as Julia Child: She’s neither the brilliant co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking or the woman in Child’s memoir, My Life in France — she’s Big Bird or, as an early viewer has noted, Mrs. Doubtfire. But on her very smart blog, Elizabeth Frank suggests the problem is Child’s young acolyte, Julie Powell: “Julie launches a blog because all of her college friends have flashy positions and shiny gadgets and she was the promising one in college; she was going to be a writer; she has ‘thoughts.’ She does, in fact, have a lot going for her, which makes her all the more exasperating. She has, for one thing, a bewilderingly loving husband who endures her constant jibes that she has ‘nothing,’ her sulking when no one reads her blog and her tantrum over a ruined stew to such an extent that his final breaking point provides the only crisis in the B plot.” And you? If you see it, please feel free to weigh in.