Review: "Julie & Julia" (2009)

Flying home from Paris one of the in-flight movie options was, naturally, Julie & Julia from 2009.

This comedy is a dual bio-pic about the famed cookbook author and OG TV cooking show host Julia Child, and a woman named Julie Powell who cooked all 524 recipes from Child's 1961 tome Mastering the Art of French. The movie flashes back and forth between the late 1940s/early 1950s (when Julia Child and her diplomat husband, Paul, were living in France and she was discovering her love of French food and the genesis of her book), and 2002 when a young, newly married woman named Julie Powell, living in NYC, decides to cook all of the book's recipes.

It's a movie about love and inspiration -- the love of food, of culture, of significant others, of the better and more refined things in life, and how these things are always challenged by the harsh realities of the world. In the Julia Child/French/mid-20th century part, Julia and her husband's life and careers are challenged by the Cold War and encroaching McCarthyism, and the Julie/NYC/early 21-st century part is challenged by the shortness of money and the dark shadow of 9/11. The movie's point is doing what you love, being with who you love, enjoying what you love is possible -- but it's a lot of hard work and sometimes we face big forces beyond our control.

Julia Child is played by Meryl Streep in one of her typical dazzling performances. Her husband is the always great, always lovable Stanley Tucci. Julie Powell is played by the perky Amy Adams and Chris Messina is her clueless but loving husband. The movie does a good job of interweaving the two stories and showing us the luscious world of post-war France and the gritty reality of early aughts NYC. And if you love food, especially French food, you'll get really hungry after watching this.

Julie & Julia was the last movie written and directed by Nora Ephron, three years before her death in 2012. She was the brilliant writer of When Harry Met Sally ..., Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and other movies.  This movie was her swan song -- and a really good one at that -- if not necessarily up there with her classics. It's worth seeing, especially if you love Paris, NYC, food, and everything that makes life worth living.