Julie & Julia - % %

Yes, after a summer of watching nearly nothing, I watched this. It was cute at points and not as annoying as some (male) reviewers have made it out to be. I won't say much because there isn't much to say.

The film revolves around a sad twenty-something who wants to be a writer but like many has not been able to find a way through hard work and tenacity to accomplish her goals and so has a temp job. It's a legitimately depressing temp job. Well they all are in legitimate ways, essentially depressing, but this one involves attempting to assist the survivors of the World Trade Center attacks. But instead of finding inspiration in her work, Julie finds it in an exercise. She decides (with the help of her shallowly depicted husband whose only characteristic, aside from being saintly, is to not like having it rubbed in his face) to begin a blog of cooking all of the recipes from Julia Child's famous book on French cooking.

And so begins Julie's creation of Julia Child in her imagination. Meryl Streep is obviously, unsurprisingly wonderful. But the plot lines with her would have been more interesting as a documentary I might watch on PBS one Sunday afternoon. She sounds much more interesting than the parallel story of the imagined Julia and the real life Julie, a simple woman without much to deal with in real life except her own underdeveloped self. So she develops herself into a better cook and a sometimes writer. She faces obstacles. Things don't always go her way. But eventually she gets profiled in the New York Times and gets a book deal. She apologizes to her bland husband and all ends happily. Yawn.

The only interesting thing I've found about this film is that Ben and Ben on At the Movies thought that Julie was whiny and childish. That's not too far from the truth. What makes this character different than say any Meg Ryan character ever is that Julie doesn't have anything going for her. I can't imagine why her husband married her. Since the book is autobiographical, apparently the author doesn't get it either. And the process of getting Julie to a place where she becomes someone of interest is painful because it illustrates a theory of mine that schooling doesn't really develop adults, life does. And much of schooling is structured to prevent maturing. Intense academic rigor should perhaps be reserved for the more matured and young adults should staff gas stations and janitorial closets and learn a bit more about themselves and life before getting fabulous educations. Then when they graduate from Barnard they perhaps won't spend eight years temping and feeling like failures.