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Julie & Julia Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for strong language and some sensuality) Genre: Comedy, Drama Theater release: August 07, 2009 by Columbia Pictures Directed by: Nora Ephron Runtime: 2 hours 2 minutes Cast: Meryl Streep (Julia Child), Amy Adams (Julie Powell), Stanley Tucci (Paul Child), Chris Messina (Eric Powell) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Two women. Fifty-three years in time and an ocean apart. Both recently relocated for their husband's jobs. Both looking for their own role in this new location. Both feeling rather lost.

And both finding their way in the kitchen.

One of them is quite well known—Julia Child (Meryl Streep)—though we're introduced to her before she's made a name for herself. It's 1949 and her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), has just been assigned to the American embassy in Paris. The couple pulls up to the lovely flat that's to be their home for the next four years and Julia's beside herself. All this and a country full of amazing food to boot. The giggly, airy-voiced foodie is in heaven.

Meryl Streep as Julia Child

The other woman, Julie Powell (Amy Adams), is experiencing her own version of hell. It's 2002 in Queens and she and her husband, Eric (Chris Messina), have just moved into a 900-square-foot walk-up apartment above a pizza parlor. It's cramped and her kitchen is tiny. This is especially problematic since Julie's only escape from her dismal job—answering angry and distraught phone calls for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation on the heels of the 9/11 attacks—is the certainty of a well-crafted recipe. Nearly every day she returns home in tears and seeks solace in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

But back in 1949, Julia has yet to help pen this cookbook classic. And she's begun to grow restless. What to do with herself in France besides eat? She tries a hat-making class, and bridge lessons, and finally lands at Le Cordon Bleu, where she makes her way to an advanced class full of very serious men. Not wanting to be the "silly woman" in the class, she practices her chopping and roasting at home and soon is the star pupil. A new passion is born.

Julia eventually meets two French women who are crafting a French cookbook in English. This pleases Julia greatly as she found no such resource when she first moved to France. When their manuscript is deemed not English enough and a bit dry, Julia is brought into the project. With their meticulous recipe testing, the task of converting metric measurements to American standards, and the slow process of capturing all this information with typewriters and carbon paper, this project spans years. Many delicious, delightful years.

Amy Adams as Julie Powell

Fast forward quite a few decades to the present time, where Julie, a wannabe writer, is somewhat disgusted when one of her high-powered corporate friends launches a popular blog. Julie should be the one regularly penning clever words for an eager electronic audience. So while she whips up dinner one evening, she and her husband, Eric, brainstorm Julie's blog: She'll cook her way through her hero Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, recording her journey through all 524 recipes in 365 days. Though the task is daunting—she'll have to debone a duck and tangle with some lobsters—she's also finally found a needed sense of direction.

The rest of the film continues to ping-pong back and forth between these women as they experience joy—and, of course, frustration—in their newfound cooking/writing projects. There are unsupportive parents, uncooperative lobster, and underwhelmed publishers to contend with. But there's also the delicious process of carving their own path and fighting their own battles, that, in some ways, is as much an answer to their earlier lost-ness as the easy successes are.

It's a loving marriage between Paul (Stanley Tucci) and Julia Child

Though the film takes its name from one book, the 2005 best-seller by real-life Julie Powell, it's actually based on two. Beloved rom-com director Nora Ephron combined Julie's blog-turned-book Julie & Julia with My Life in France, a lovely travel narrative written by Julia Child and her grand-nephew Alex Prud'homme.

Though Ephron did a deft job of weaving these women's tales evenly and entertainingly, the segments featuring Julia Child are especially delightful. That's partly due to Child's winning personality and partly due to Streep's charming portrayal. Streep's turn never feels like an SNL sketch (though we are treated to Bill Murray's hysterical portrayal when Julie and Eric watch some late-night TV) but more like a loving homage. But would we expect any less from Streep? No, not at all. It's simply a treat that Hollywood keeps finding juicy characters for her to embody on the big screen.

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