"Julie and Julia" release date 16.10.2009
November 11, 2009I just saw “Julie and Julia” and ideas are just floating around in my head. I don’t even know where to start, what I loved, what to criticize, what is representative about this movie.
Well let’s take it into an order that is relevant (at least from my point of view).
The movie presents the stories of two women who lived in different periods of time, but whose lives are highly interconnected.
The first lady is Julia Child, her story is somewhere in the 50′s or 60′s, don’t really know, I guess I haven’t been that attentive to the details as I should have. The role is played by Meryl Streep, and she is the wife of Paul (Stanley Tucci), an ambassador of the U.S. in France (or working for the US Embassy, again… details I missed) Being so very much in love with Paul and loving to cook she starts taking a class of professional chefs in Paris, and becomes rather good at it. Later together with two friends they decide to write a cooking book. After a long and exhausting experience with editing houses and so on Julia finally manages to get her book printed. It is the book that will influence the life our next heroine in such a beautiful way.
Julie Powel, is somehow of a writer, stuck in a pointless job in a call center. One day after meeting with some of her friends (which all became successful writers, or executives) she gets the idea from one of them to write a blog. And so the “Julie and Julia” project starts with the point of preparing all of the recipes in Julia Child’s book and writing about them in one year, more then 500 recipes in 365 days. Obviously in time the blog becomes a huge success, and Julie with the help of Julia, the one she gets to know by reading from her book, finds her way and as every good story finds her happy ending.
That’s so much about the story of the movie. I’ll get on with criticizing it now. Well there isn’t much to say at this chapter. I’ll point out that there is no message to this movie, but a good story doesn’t always need a message (the Grimm brothers can probably confirm this theory). I never liked Stanley Tucci and after this role I must say that… I still don’t like Stanley Tucci, but I have to admit that he played his part pretty well. And, at the chapter of criticism, in my opinion this is not a movie to be seen at the cinemas, rent a DVD, stay nice and cozy in bed and enjoy it!
Now the best part of it, the loving part. I must say I honestly loved this movie, and I can’t even say why. As I said, it does not have a message, so it didn’t reach me on some level, I couldn’t find myself in any of the characters, I don’t know if there is something to the story that makes you go “ahhhh” from time to time and I just loved that. Oh, and it doesn’t make you say “ahhhh” from showing you cute puppy eyes or stuff like that, just the story and it’s ups and downs and it’s rhythm, this is what makes this movie good.
In order for you to understand the next part that I loved about this movie I have to first state that Julia Child was a very tall woman. Now what I loved was the fact that instead of taking a tall actress to play the part of Julia Child, they chose Meryl Streep, who in my opinion is one of the best, if not the best, actresses of our times, and chose all the other actors or figure persons in the scenes with her to be smaller so that she would look that tall, hence Stanley Tucci. I also noticed in the last scene that Meryl was wearing abnormally high heals, but still all the other characters were chosen around her, and not the other way around. Bravo producers, bravo!
