Julie and Julia

"Julie and Julia" is an adaptation of the book written by Julie Powell, who spent a year blogging about cooking all the recipes in Julia Child's well-known cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking".  Nora Ephron directed the film, and she let her 2 stars do what they do, with Meryl Streep channeling Julia Child's ascent to a respectable French cook to an uncanny degree, while Amy Adams gets the less showy job of playing Julie Powell during her year of struggles with the cooking, and the ups and downs of life.

Through the year of blogging, the film alternates between Julie's life, and showing us Julia's own experiences of trying to learn French cooking, something that was more of a male-dominated occupation at the time, coupled with other obstacles and uncertainty with her life with Paul Child, who went from appointment to appointment with the US State Department, and one of the stops was an assignment in France, where Julia would find her way to French cuisine.

The film is more entertaining during the Julia Child segments, mainly based on the performances of Streep, and Stanley Tucci (playing Paul Child).  Streep is a shoe-in for another Oscar nomination for Best Actress, as she imbues plenty of humor and life into the film.  The more contemporary segments featuring Julie Powell and her husband Eric are less compelling, but needed to prop up the plotline of Julia's importance to Julie's own life, derived from the self-motivated idea to experience French cuisine based on the writings and experiences of Julia Child, and inadvertently finds her own voice during blogging as her readership grow and grows.

The film is rather uneven in spots, and Ephron doesn't quite keep the pace up throughout its running time, but it's pleasant enough and funny enough to keep its audience's attention spans.

I give it 2.75 stars, or a grade of B-.