Last night I rented and watched the movie Julie & Julia. For those not familiar with it, it is a biographical film of cookbook author and TV cook Julia Child, and of blogger Julie Powell, who rose to fame in the blogging world when she cooked every single recipe from Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and wrote a deservedly popular blog about it.
Unfortunately the two biographies were not created equal. Julia Child’s life in France and the writing of the cookbook she co-authored and that made her famous is contrasted with Julie Powell’s life in New York in the naughties and her struggle to find herself. It is possible to make an ordinary life interesting, but the film manages to make Powell’s story so utterly dull and uninteresting by comparison with Child's that I wanted to shout every time the film cut from Child to Powell.
Why couldn’t they just have made a biopic about Julia Child? Lord knows she deserves a full 2 hours to herself. With her war-time career, the romance with her husband, interesting characters, plenty of food porn, an interesting setting and era and Meryl Streep in the lead role it could and probably would, have been a hit. As it stands, the only way I will watch it again is with my finger on the fast forward button to get past the Julia Powell scenes.
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P.S. Look for the occasional foodie movie review on this blog in the future.
