Julie & Julia

Movie review from The Movie Snob

Julie & Julia (B-). This is a pleasant little diversion based on two true-life stories. One is about Julia Child, who famously brought the art of French cooking to America in the years after WWII. The other is about Julie Powell, a modern New Yorker who needs a goal. The goal she adopts is to cook every recipe in Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia!) plays Child as a generally happy giant of a woman, and it is fun to watch her navigate a Parisian cooking school and wrangle her acquired knowledge into a format that an American publishing company will buy. Amy Adams (Sunshine Cleaning) plays Powell as a bit of a self-absorbed sad-sack, with a soul-crushing job as a cubicle-dweller who spends all day on the phone dealing with claims and complaints relating to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Powell apparently spun a successful blog and then book out of her traversal of Child's cookbook, but the movie left me wondering--did Powell ever get to meet her hero before Child's death in 2004?