..Gary Dretzka
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..Douglas Pratt
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..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

..Wilmington on DVD ..MCN Weekend

Julie and Julia and A Perfect Getaway _________________________________

Julie and Julia (Three Stars)
U. S.; Nora Ephron, 2009

In Julie and Julia, a perky and ambitious young Manhattan writer named Julie Powell decides to cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s culinary bible “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in the space of a year -- and write a blog about it, called Julie and Julia. Can she make it? Can she and her husband Eric (Chris Messina) eat it? Will Julie strike it rich by mining Julia and serving her up on a  blog? Most importantly, is this a clicky movie subject, in a field where catastrophes, murders and sexual high jinks  abound? Well, yes… as long as you have the right recipe and the right people. Especially Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, the movie’s Julia and Julie.
      
Now, Nora Ephron has never really been a favorite writer-director of mine. Most of her modern bourgeois romantic comedies (whether Heartburn which she wrote, Sleepless in Seattle, which she directed,  or You’ve Got Mail, which she wrote and directed) -- strike me as a little smug, cutesy-chic and overly self-absorbed: love-and-sex comedies about people who have it good, but self-fixate too much.
   
But I enjoyed Ephron’s latest, Julie and Julia, which is a comedy about love, sex and food -- and success, which is the secret engine of many a bourgeois fantasy. The movie is based on Julie Powell’s book, Julie and Julia, which is about Ms. Powell‘s year spent in cooking all 524 recipes in Child’s epic cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, and writing a blog about it. Ephron takes Julie‘s story -- the spicy tale of a gorgeous young Manhattanite (played by Amy Adams), who has a perfect, understanding husband, Eric (Chris Messina), and who figures out a way to get famous (and maybe, eventually rich) -- and interweaves it with Julia Child‘s own experiences as the 30-something wife of U. S. diplomatic employee Paul Child (Stanley Tucci, in a stellar job), stationed with him in Paris, who develops a passion for French food and cooking, and eventually gets famous and rich, writing about it, as well.
    
That’s the twin theme of these stories: how a writer with a good husband strikes it rich by cooking, eating and scribbling about it.  The difference, of course, lies in the fact that Julia Child --  along with her early collaborators Simone Beck (Linda Emond) and Louise Bertholle check (Helen Carey), brought something wonderful to the world: a priceless collection of haute cuisine recipes that fed a multitude and inspired millions, including Julie Powell. Powell simply cooked the 524 recipes in 365 days and blogged, gabbed and whined about her daily routines -- winding up with a book deal, and eventually a movie.
     
They’re not at all comparable figures, though the movie tends to play them that way -- very well served by a brilliant impersonation by the always amazing Streep, and a very fetching one, by the always engaging Adams. These performances are almost as good as they could be, and so is Tucci’s -- from that veteran of another cinematic banquet, Big Night.
   
Entertaining as the movie is, the comparison of Julia‘s stimulating literary/political milieu (Child and Paul have to cope with the McCarthy era as well as the vagaries of diplomatic and culinary careers) and Julie‘s more superficial ain’t-we-cute domain, are all on the side of Child. Late in the movie, when we hear that Julia C. herself has read the blog and apparently doesn’t like it, I wasn’t surprised. Why should she? What did Powell expect, from an old-fashioned liberal writer, working in the world of print and classical publishing, confronted with a do-it-yourself internet blog that makes a huge slumgullion of Julia‘s recipes and Julie’s misadventures?
   
Julie and Julia is all about striking it rich by piggybacking on someone else‘s fame and efforts -- and if a less delightful actress than Adams had played Powell, I might have gotten much more annoyed with her. (By the way, couldn’t Julie have hunted Julia down and conferred with her earlier? After all, the woman was alive when the blog ran.)
    
Meryl Streep has performed so many acting miracles so regularly, that we probably shouldn’t be surprised at the way she slips into the persona of the very familiar, and distinctively throaty-voiced Mrs. Child. It’s a marvelous performance, full of zest and humor and honest goddam joie de vivre. As for Adams, she’s such an unfailing movie honeybunch that it doesn’t matter whether she’s nailed the real-life Julie Powell. The film Julie and Julia might have been better though, if Ephron had gone beyond the book and made her “heroine” a little more obviously selfish.)
    
Ephron’s  movie has been very prettily designed by Marl Ricker, and warmly shot by Stephen Goldblatt, and Ephron has written and staged it with a playful elegance I didn’t see in, for example, Mixed Nuts or You’ve Got Mail (a botched remake and rethink of one of Hollywood‘s greatest romantic comedies, The Shop Around the Corner).  The show doesn’t have enough food, though it does have some amusing Cordon Bleu cooking school scenes, showcasing the impressively deft chef Streep.
    
But Julie and Julia couldn’t possibly have too much Streep or Adams. Single-handedly -- or, rather, double-handedly -- they make Julie and Julia, a picture which could have been a bland “me first” bore, a tasty treat.


A Perfect Getaway (Three Stars)
U. S.; David Twohy, 2009

Here, we‘re back to murders and sexual high jinks, but not unentertainingly. On a remote paradisiacal island, sharp newlyweds Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich), helicopter their way into the mountains and distant beaches, and eventually meet two other couples --  the surly Kale and girlish-sexy Cleo (Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton) and the ever-smiling Nick and uninhibited Gina (Keile Sanchez). It looks like fun, except that we’ve also learned that another newlywed couple has been killed in the area, possibly by a murderous twosome who may have stolen their identities.
     
Which couple, if any, did the dirty deeds? A Perfect Getaway, written and directed by David Twohy, of the Chronicles of Riddick, has some bloody adventures, big surprises and double-reverse Agatha Christie-style twists in store, and it wouldn’t be fair to reveal or hint at any of them. Overall, the movie is an okay job. The very reliable Steve Zahn, playing a movie scriptwriter, gets, as we might expect, a nice mix of nervous nerdiness and recklessness; all the other characters charm and unsettle us by turns.
     
The action at the end is over the top, but that‘s  a common failing of many contemporary thrillers. In this case, you should have fun trying to guess what’s happening and why, and who’s doing what to who. Just remember, if you get lost on the island, what Strother Martin said so cogently in Cool Hand Luke: “What we have here is a failure t’ communicate.” 

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Read Michael Wilmington on DVDs

- Michael Wilmington
August 6, 2009

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