Julie & Julia

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: August 7th, 2009 (wide)

Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, Jane Lynch
 
Directed by: Nora Ephron 

Premise: Based on two true stories, Julie & Julia intertwines the lives of two women who, though separated by time and space, are both at loose ends until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter, anything is possible.

[SiliasRuby]

Not interested.

[picolas]

devote a couple seconds to reading my post too.

[Gold Trumpet]

There's a lot of good inspiration in this movie. Not ground breaking or something that wants to hedge any top ten lists, but a film I hope to keep close to my heart because it deals with a lot of things I'm interested in. Should go down as a favorite of mine for 2009.

In biography movies about artists, films will usually concentrate on events that are peripheral to an artist's art. The stories will focus on their life events and exclude the fact that the artist's original significance lies in their hours spent toward a small obsession that can't be filmed to huge theatrics or understanding because it's a hard topic to relay. It's almost too personal to dramatize the hours spent laboring over something small. Julie and Julia does not find new ways to quarantine its drama to those small circles to make us feel the breath of an artist's struggle, but it gets something small very right.

Whenever anyone is in the moment of a process of creating something, while they may be physically alone in their work, they always feel a bond of communication with a pillar of inspiration of theirs. Julie and Julia is about such a bond between two chefs of different generations and approaches, but the film adaquately measures the turmoil of artificially creating a living person in your mind to consistently draw from when working on your work. After a certain amount of time, the person you talk to in your head has a history and understanding with you. Whenever they are referenced in real life by other people, you draw from your memories of them first like you know them. Everything you have created with them is imaginary and not relatable to the real life person, but that does not matter because the important development is that you've found a strand of your brain that allows you to step out of the moment and reconsider the creative process that is very hard to step back from.

In the movie, Amy Adam's young Julie is recreating the story of how the original Julia strived to make her own success. Even though she is an icon in Julie's time, the flashbacks show that all the hardships that Julie faces are ones that Julia also faced in her youth. The parallel of their dramas become a point of inspiration for Julie to succeed through tough times. Julie feels that if they had lived together at the same point in time, they maybe could understand each other for what they were trying to do for their own art, but she has to live with the memory of Julia as a pioneer in her profession. The new Julie faces a harsh reality when she finds out that Julia does not respect her blog at all (She's still alive, but very elder). At first the news breaks Julie's heart, but then she understands how she created a memory of Julia and how that memory is what is really important to her because it helps facilitates her work and art.

I feel trepidacious speaking in praise of a Hollywood film adequately taking on an important subject so let me say that my feedback was very personal. I'm sure other films handle this subject better, but I also go back to a film like Bull Durham when wanting to consult with the notion of failure. It isn't the most sweeping film about failure, but the point is that it understands certain things about failure that other films just don't seem to grasp. Things that do feel pertinent and personal to just critically objectify. The same could be said about Julie and Julia with the creative process.

[matt35mm]

Holy shit, I loved this movie!  I agree with GT on all his points, and just want to add that I was impressed with how organically the two stories flowed together.  I generally dislike bio-pics because they're just a checklist of stuff that happened, and then you're basically stuck in a room with Jamie Foxx doing a Ray Charles impression at you for what feels like 3 hours... but Nora Ephron found a great way to go about making a bio-pic.  And it's really two bio-pics in one!  My only criticism was a rushed introduction for Julie, but since the movie is about what happens while she's writing her blog, I can understand why they wanted to get to that quickly.  The rest of the movie was paced wonderfully and had an easy breezy feel.  I was impressed, because I remember watching about 10 minutes of You've Got Mail on TV and found it clunky and unpleasant, and I don't have fond memories of the other Nora Ephron movies that I've seen.  With Lucky Numbers and Bewitched (I didn't see either), it seemed like Nora Ephron was one to just discount forever, but she did great work here.

I also really liked seeing a film about two independent women whose lives revolve around what they are interested in.  It's unforgivably rare!  Too often it seems like I'm watching movies about men and some statues that vaguely resemble human females who pop into the frame sometimes... to talk about the men/babies/how they look.  Julie & Julia has good roles for women and men.  Stanley Tucci was fabulous, and is able to shine here in a way that he doesn't get to in The Lovely Bones.  He has an easy charm.  Julie's husband could have been developed a bit more but he was fine.

All the performances were fabulous, with Meryl Streep as the obvious standout.  She just is great.  Her work here towers above Sandra Bullock's, as everybody knew it did.  Her Julia Child is well-defined beyond just the mimicry.  And I don't know how to not love Amy Adams.

So basically, this movie is lovely and worth checking out.  I can understand why it was largely dismissed, because I dismissed it, too, until I saw it.

[Gold Trumpet]

That was a smile inducing review, Matt. Thanks and hope others find good ways to like this movie. It deserves more cheers.

[pete]

this movie wasn't particularly interesting.  I think it was too faithful to the blog or the book or whatever and played out a lot of the drama in very boring ways.  the real julie might have more of an edge - judging by her job, her fear of failure, and her obsession, but the movie went too cutesy about it and justified everything in a very limited range of emotions - when she breaks down she's like cute and mopey and the audience just kinda laughs at her.  same thing with julia childs, who was given a 21st-century re-branding in this film, no doubt, but still, an amazing lady's life gets reduced to a bunch of "oh wow I didn't know she'd be as raunchy/ confrontational as that" moments.
it's all the disappointing that it's based in real life but the filmmakers did not have enough curiosity to play with the material; they stopped at the premise.

[Alexandro]

I tried to see this but was too bored with it to stay. Kinda hated the cutesy aspect of it, the music cues, the general vibe of people with money r something. I don't know, I just never felt interested.

[Gold Trumpet]

the real julie might have more of an edge - judging by her job, her fear of failure, and her obsession, but the movie went too cutesy about it and justified everything in a very limited range of emotions - when she breaks down she's like cute and mopey and the audience just kinda laughs at her.

Yea, lets assume there has to be a darker resonance to the personality. That makes sense as a criticism because she couldn't be someone who wanted to be just nice and as cheery as she believed her hero was in some ways. That would not be real enough.

same thing with julia childs, who was given a 21st-century re-branding in this film, no doubt, but still, an amazing lady's life gets reduced to a bunch of "oh wow I didn't know she'd be as raunchy/ confrontational as that" moments.
it's all the disappointing that it's based in real life but the filmmakers did not have enough curiosity to play with the material; they stopped at the premise.

1.) It is more about Julie and not Julia so yes, Julia is complimentary material.

2.) Well, the premise is the situation of writing a blog for a year. It isn't the full picture of either of their lives. Whatever Julia Child's life may be, it's served to blend in with a modern girl's very specific experience over the course of a year. I think you're assuming the film should have a large ambition or somehow did.

[pete]

even with its current "ambition" ie. limiting the scope to what was written in the books and the blog, the material could still be interpreted in any sort of ways, and the film took a pretty superficial approach to the meltdowns and the existential crisis - the film didn't really seem to care and what looked like the only conflicts the characters had were played for laughs essentially, which is lazy.  it becomes hard to empathize with the character and the only thing we had to go on were the voiceover narration which I assumed were taken verbatim from the blog - used to justify each scene.

[Pubrick]

i rented this piece of shit based on GT's hype. i shoulda waited for alexandro and pete to review the thing accurately.

it was boring and ultimately pointless. the ending says it all, is julie meant to be the most pathetic delluded character in recent cinema? the movie certainly thinks her story is interesting enough to ridiculously parallel julia child's actual achievements. it's NO WONDER that the old hag thinks the young one is a jerk. in fact, when she finds out that her idol probably hates her the movie becomes simply ridiculous.. there is no way she would handle it so well that a simple stupid montage of a long conversation with her dull-as-SHIT boyfriend would sort it out.. she had a fucking meltdown when that one dish didn't work out so how can she possibly be OK with her reason-to-live telling her basically that she should die?

and don't get me started on the boyfriend. that idiot's storyline made even less sense than every other superficial event in the film. his subplot was so laughable and that douche actor was so unlikable/unmemorable that me and my lady friend LOLd when he "stormed out" and supposedly got so angry that he was going to sleep at his "office". i say "office" cos who the fuck even knew that guy had a job! she seems to take it as a totally logical action and then their reunion.. haha! are you kidding me GT? maybe you think this is how ppl really act man cos it was the single worst part of the film, almost to the point of derailment.

and on meryl. she''s a great actress cos she proves it with the crap script she was given. the entire subplot of her not being able to have kids takes place over pretty much two scenes which she elevates with her amazing abilities. the one where she's walking with tucci in the park and goes past the baby stroller, then she looks kind of serious -- ok wish for children established, assumed she's too old for it now. then the one in the kitchen where she gets the letter from her sister and she suddenly breaks down -- that little moment feels SO much more real than any bullshit breakdown and fight that happens to julie. that's all meryl.

this movie is completely forgettable and only mildly watchable. i think amy adams is hot so i somehow made it through, but that isn't even a reason to recommend this.

[Gold Trumpet]

Yea, I'm sorry this is going to sound semi-assholish and I mean it in the best ways, but I'm happy I discovered blogging and am only going to post generally here with no more long reviews or anything substantial. I thought the last paragraph of my review would make people understand that I knew there were better movies than this and my reaction was more personal. Things are lost in the shuffle, but sometimes even when they are not, it still gets this kind of reaction.

[Pubrick]

don't do that.

you were right about the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

just don't waste your time on long reviews for crap films that's all.

[Gold Trumpet]

It's not about being right. Too many people here only consider reviews good based on whether they agree with it. Even if you disagree with someone, it's more about them making points that make you at least consider a different perspective of the film. I find more value in reviews I disagree with because it may help me better understand my position on something. I really love Julie and Julia, but if you look at my review, the framework is less about whether it's a good movie and more about how it gets something small I connected with very right. I reviewed that aspect of the film. I barely looked at the whole thing yet thumbs up or down is what matters.

If anyone thinks my comment about the place on the board has anything do with this conversation here in this thread, it doesn't. What is said above is a general remark, but a few weeks ago I decided blogging was more my thing anyways and I am grateful to the board for what it has been to me over the years. I just have taken to the freedom of blogging everyday and I have been writing at length lately. I have been even carrying over my favorite posts from here to there when I am pressed for time, but blogging seems to make more sense for me in the end. I'll still post here, but I think I am due for my Jeremy Blackman transition when he stopped writing long reviews and just become a small time commentator on general stuff.

[Stefen]

How fitting your 5000th post was spent defending your tastes haha.