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Julie & Julia
Aug. 23rd, 2009 12:40 amSo, not being able to get in to Inglorious Bastards (I refuse to spell it the other way. Sorry, Quentin Tarantino, but I love the ENGLISH LANGUAGE more than I love you. It helps that the English language never made me sit through Death Proof), I went to see Julie & Julia. And I was in the mood for seeing Nazis get beaten to death with baseball bats.
(Pardon me while I have a strange interlude: I say to my brother "Hey, wanna go see Inglorious Bastards?" "Yes." "Okay, at 3:30, when it won't be crowded?" "No, I'll be napping then. Let's go in the evening."
THAT EVENING--he flakes out, I go on my own, and I can't get in because it's a Saturday and everybody goes to see new releases on Saturday. This is the man I was raised with. And you wonder why I'm antisocial.)
I guess the point of the movie is to show the similarities between Julia Child and Julie Powell, or more accurately to show the impact Julia Child had on the world by spotlighting her effect on Julie Powell (although since the point of Julie's blog was that it's very rare to use Julia Child's recipes, to the extent that you'll get a book deal and a major motion picture if you actually cook all of them, they kinda shot themselves in the foot there). Unfortunately, what they end up with is more contrast than compare. You end up seeing exactly how some stories deserve to be films and some don't.
And let's be honest here... they dramatized a blog. Scroll up to that interlude with my brother. Would that really gain anything from being acted out on the silver screen? It'd just take longer to bore you, really.
So in this one plotline, you have Meryl Streep's Julia Child and Stanley Tucci's Paul living in Paris. They go to exotic places, meet interesting people, and publish a cookbook that introduces French cuisine to the American mainstream. More than that, Julia and Paul are the kind of couple we just don't see enough of in cinema. They're over the hill, they're sweet, they're charming, and they're surprisingly sexy. It's very refreshing.
And in this other plotline, you have Amy Adams' Julie Powell fangirling Julia Child. It's like cutting away from a story about the Doctor and Donna Noble saving the universe to showcase a Doctor Who fan. Who would want to watch that? And it's like they took all the bland, patronizing, stupid rom-com cliches and used them up in this storyline, and then all the good stuff they gave to Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, who take that shit and ride with it.
With Julie and her boy-toy, there's angst and blandness and the second-act break-up and the third-act get-together and a haranguing mom. They give her a character arc and conflict with her boyfriend and all this Screenwriting 101 BS, while Julia Child is free to have her story all to herself. I imagine all these studio executives giving notes on how Julie Powell should have a cute cat they could cut to for reaction shots, then letting the writers slip in all this good stuff about Julia Child because hey, who cares about the old people?
Once again, there does not ever need to be a movie of someone becoming internet-famous. The world of cinema does not need a triumphant scene of someone getting comments on her blog. Amy Adams is cute and all, but she can't hide that this character comes across as vapid, shallow, and narcissistic. I understand they want to show the impact Julia Child had, but surely they just could've cherry-picked a few of the more entertaining anecdotes from Julie Powell's blog and otherwise just used her to give context to the Julia Child story.
Seeing Amy Adams trying to kill a lobster, that's fun. Seeing her argue with her boyfriend? I think I need to refill my popcorn.
So, if you're in the mood for half of a good movie and, say, you have a bladder the size of a thimble, enjoy your Julia Child movie with Amy Adams-themed intermissions.
(Pardon me while I have a strange interlude: I say to my brother "Hey, wanna go see Inglorious Bastards?" "Yes." "Okay, at 3:30, when it won't be crowded?" "No, I'll be napping then. Let's go in the evening."
THAT EVENING--he flakes out, I go on my own, and I can't get in because it's a Saturday and everybody goes to see new releases on Saturday. This is the man I was raised with. And you wonder why I'm antisocial.)
I guess the point of the movie is to show the similarities between Julia Child and Julie Powell, or more accurately to show the impact Julia Child had on the world by spotlighting her effect on Julie Powell (although since the point of Julie's blog was that it's very rare to use Julia Child's recipes, to the extent that you'll get a book deal and a major motion picture if you actually cook all of them, they kinda shot themselves in the foot there). Unfortunately, what they end up with is more contrast than compare. You end up seeing exactly how some stories deserve to be films and some don't.
And let's be honest here... they dramatized a blog. Scroll up to that interlude with my brother. Would that really gain anything from being acted out on the silver screen? It'd just take longer to bore you, really.
So in this one plotline, you have Meryl Streep's Julia Child and Stanley Tucci's Paul living in Paris. They go to exotic places, meet interesting people, and publish a cookbook that introduces French cuisine to the American mainstream. More than that, Julia and Paul are the kind of couple we just don't see enough of in cinema. They're over the hill, they're sweet, they're charming, and they're surprisingly sexy. It's very refreshing.
And in this other plotline, you have Amy Adams' Julie Powell fangirling Julia Child. It's like cutting away from a story about the Doctor and Donna Noble saving the universe to showcase a Doctor Who fan. Who would want to watch that? And it's like they took all the bland, patronizing, stupid rom-com cliches and used them up in this storyline, and then all the good stuff they gave to Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, who take that shit and ride with it.
With Julie and her boy-toy, there's angst and blandness and the second-act break-up and the third-act get-together and a haranguing mom. They give her a character arc and conflict with her boyfriend and all this Screenwriting 101 BS, while Julia Child is free to have her story all to herself. I imagine all these studio executives giving notes on how Julie Powell should have a cute cat they could cut to for reaction shots, then letting the writers slip in all this good stuff about Julia Child because hey, who cares about the old people?
Once again, there does not ever need to be a movie of someone becoming internet-famous. The world of cinema does not need a triumphant scene of someone getting comments on her blog. Amy Adams is cute and all, but she can't hide that this character comes across as vapid, shallow, and narcissistic. I understand they want to show the impact Julia Child had, but surely they just could've cherry-picked a few of the more entertaining anecdotes from Julie Powell's blog and otherwise just used her to give context to the Julia Child story.
Seeing Amy Adams trying to kill a lobster, that's fun. Seeing her argue with her boyfriend? I think I need to refill my popcorn.
So, if you're in the mood for half of a good movie and, say, you have a bladder the size of a thimble, enjoy your Julia Child movie with Amy Adams-themed intermissions.
