Julie & Julia

Directed by Nora Ephron

(PG-13)

**

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A mash-up of Julia Child’s and Julie Powell’s memoirs about cooking

Expect to leave Julie & Julia wanting more, said Kirk Honeycutt in The Hollywood Reporter. Dishes of boeuf bourguignon and desserts of fromage blanc move temptingly across the screen in Nora Ephron’s time-hopping culinary adventure, which adapts both Julia Child’s My Life in France and Julie Powell’s Julie & Julia. Yet the film leaves viewers craving a “deeper, more nuanced measure of the women.” Amy Adams’ Julie, a blogger who spent a year whipping up all 524 recipes in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, comes across as bland, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. But mostly, she’s overshadowed by Meryl Streep’s Child, who towers literally and figuratively over the film. It’s not that Adams isn’t Streep; it’s that Julie isn’t Julia. Child’s fascinating life, as a diplomat’s wife and then a budding television star, would alone have been plenty for a film. While “hardly a perfect soufflé,” Julie & Julia celebrates the joyous act of cooking as few other films ever have, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. It’s the “movie American foodie culture has been waiting for.”