I need to pay more attention to the directors of films like this.  I knew that this was a Nora Ephron film, but I have somehow lost my memory about her previously crappy films in my attention on the similarity of her name with High School Musical's Zac Efron (they are not related.)  I am not opposed in principle to the kinds of movies that Ephron has made--I like a good romantic comedy, or dramady, or even a sweeping romantic epic, but she typically makes the most populist, generic examples of these kinds of films.  I suppose that Sleepless in Seattle is better than something like the recent Sandra Bullock vehicles, but its still overly sentimental and made without a whole lot of style.

Julie and Julia has a great premise, but it's put together in such a dull and predictable way that anything about it that might be interesting gets ground up in the tedium.  Meryl Streep does an incredible job as Julia Child and there were plenty of moments in the Julia Child section of the story where I got choked up because I have fond memories of watching Julia on TV, but the film doesn't earn that emotional response.  I'm a big fan of Amy Adams, of cooking, of the idea of a struggling cubicle worker realizing her dream through blogging about food, and yet I am not a fan of this film, and that owes to the director.

This is one of those movies where I want a do-over.  I'd love to see this done in a more stylized way with the movie broken into two distinct (and not overlapping) chapters or with the Julia Child sections told from a different perspective.  It would have been pretty interesting if the whole movie had been from Julie's point of view, including the Julia Child bits that could have come from Julie's imaginary and idealized version of Julia's real story.  The movie seemed overly long and they could have trimmed out the bit about Julia's sister or some of the perfunctory back story--not to make a better movie but at least a shorter one.  As it stands, the movie tries to be a dual bio-pic and it lacks the depth or vision to do that effectively.  It's simply the most bland and predictable way that the story of Julie and Julia could be told, and in that, it's disappointing.