Julie and Julia

Whilst we were in Tennessee, we went to see Julie and Julia. Do you want to know how it was? Well, I'll tell you.*

It was good. As most of the reviews will tell you, the Julie part (following the blogger played by Amy Adams) was not as good as the Julia part (with Meryl Streep as Julia Child and hey, looking these two descriptions, how could you think it would be?). On the other hand, I didn't think the Julie parts were as bad as most of the critics seem to. Amy Adams' character can be kind of whiny, especially at the beginning, but she's not horrible. I found those scenes to be more gently dull than aggressively annoying.

And it's worth waiting through the Julie parts to get to the Julia parts. Oh my gosh you guys, Meryl-Streep-as-Julia-Child is so charming and so endearing and so precious. And funny. Every time she was on screen, it wasn't just me that was happy--it was obvious that everybody in that theater was delighted. She and Stanley Tucci are also adorable together. (One funny thing is, since Meryl Streep isn't really that tall a lady, they obviously both put her in enormous heels and cast the shortest people they could find for all of her scenes.)

The most startling thing about the movie was this: the theater was full at noon on a Wednesday. Why? Because it was packed, packed I tell you, with people of retirement age. Never have I seen this large a number, let along this large a proportion, of people in their sixties or over at a movie. Julia Child is apparently a rockstar for people forty years older than me.

Now, I'm not saying it's great cinema or anything--even in the Julia Child parts, there were subplots that were pointless and went nowhere. But on its own terms (as a romantic comedy, with romances between Mr. and Mrs. Child, Mr. and Mrs. Bloggerton [I can't remember her last name] and the one-way deep and abiding love of Julie for Julia), it's sweet and funny and a nice way to spend a couple of hours.


*Please understand that even though "Well, I'll tell you" looks like a perfectly normal combination of words, in my head it is said with the cadence of Terry Jones as Prince Herbert as he kicks off the song about how he survived his fall from the tower of Swamp Castle. Yeah.