Julie & Julia

Rated: Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and some sensuality

Genre: Biography, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Release Date: 7 August 2009

Runtime: 123 min

Director: Nora Ephron

Cast: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, Linda Emond, Helen Carey

Julie and Julia is one of iReel’s latest additions. The film follows the lives of two women who find their lives intertwined. Julia Child (Meryl Streep) and Julie Powel (Amy Adams) both go from having nothing to do with their days to becoming excellent chefs with a growing pool of fans, and though they are from different times their stories are so similar. Julia finds herself stationed in Paris with thanks to her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) who works with the US government. She discovers her love for eating and decides taking cooking lessons is how she will spend her time.

Julie’s situation however is not so glamorous. She instead finds herself living on top of a pizza parlor in New York with her husband Eric’s (Chris Messina), moving their because of his job. When Julie meets with her executive working friends and feels all of a sudden trapped in a rather unrewarding job at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s call center, she decides to take on the challenge of cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and begins to blog daily about it with the hopes of being discovered and becoming a someone.

Although both stories run a similar pattern they are separated by time (about 50 years apart) and space (different continents), both women are at a point in their lives where they feel as though something is missing, that is until they discover that with the right combination of love, the willingness to try anything, boning a duck, and butter, anything is possible. Julie and Julia is a lighthearted entertaining film. It is interesting to see how a true passion for something, even something as simple as the lust for food, can transform a 30something year old from a daily no body into a massive chef and writer. I guess they aren’t wrong when they say dreams really do come true.