Bon appetit!

3 main reasons for watching Julie and Julia : (A) Nora Ephron, (B) Amy Adams, and (C) Cooking. Back in the 90's, Ephron's When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail were my favorites for rom-com (romantic comedy) genre. But since then, I guess it's been somehow so many misses for her. But after watching this one, it's like her biggest comeback after the total failure of Bewitched (damn you Will Ferrell!!). With amazing cast such as amazingly Meryl Streep and Amy Adams (what a beauty), this is one of the best rom com of the year, especially when it is combined with lots of cooking. Mind you, our favorite TV channels at moment are Asia Food Channel and Discovery Health and Living. Basically, we love cooking shows, from Jamie Oliver, Curtis Stone, Rob Rainford, etc, you name it! With all these perfect ingredients, Julie and Julia just deliver us a perfect recipe to experience a different kind of rom-com movie.

Based on 2 true stories, Julie and Julia tells us the life of Julia Child and Julie Powell. The first one was a famous American Chef who introduced the French cuisine and cooking techniques to the American mainstream through her cookbooks and television shows. The movie told us where Julia just moved to Paris in 1948, with her husband who worked at the US embassy, where she couldn't stand of doing nothing. Therefore, since her main interest was cuisine, she was interested in learning how to cook. The funny thing, she was almost 40 year old, and she didn't even know how to boil an egg. And after struggling with French language and horrible reception towards women on learning to cook, she managed to get a grip, and found her way to write "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", which eventually will become one of the most influential book in American culinary history.

On the other era, 2002, Julie Powell just moved in to Queens, NY, with her husband. Apparently, Julie worked in Lower Manhattan Development, just near the Ground Zero location. Her daily basis was to deal with stressing and complaint phone calls regarding the 9/11, family grief, or the protest on the new tower plan. In short, her life was so miserable back then. But, she always finds joy and pleases her self through cooking, where her husband acknowledges the talent in culinary. Therefore, he suggested that she should start her own blog. Since Julia Child is her inspiration for cooking, Julie then came up with the idea about making a challenge by cooking all 500+ recipes from "the Mastering the Art of French Cooking" book, within a year period, and wrote the experiences down in her blog. A plan which looked like lots of fun and full of excitements at the beginning, eventually became an egoistic and nightmare torture for Julie, since she was taking it way to seriously. In the end, she had to find a better way to keep her blog and marriage life in perfect balance, especially when her blog suddenly became popular each day.

These two stories are told in parallel with nice switching and mixing between them, so we won't be confused at all. The combination of telling the 1950's and 2002's era altogether gives us different colors and feelings, which are perfectly blended into the main character. We can see how each character struggles with her own ambitions and how they can go through all the ups and downs. And most importantly, how they can maintain their relationships when all else fails. Julia is a positive thinker, and always able to encourage herself when she feels down, while on the other hand, Julie is kinda childish person, who is self-centered, but not able to solve all the problems by herself. But most of the times, it's the cooking which eventually becomes their life savior.

Merly Streep gave one of her best performance (as always), where she provides the warmth and comforting Julia. I reckon she will get nominated for Golden Globe next year. On the other hand, Amy Adams (with short hair) as always, mesmerizes us with her magnetic appearances and gorgeous looks, and not to mention, good performance on bringing Julie into life. Other notable cast such as Stanley Tucci with Chris Messina are able to balance the main characters story life as the supportive husbands.

As quoted from rottentomatoes.com, boosted by Meryl Streep's charismatic performance as Julia Child, Julie and Julia is a light, but fairly entertaining culinary comedy. With great panache, it celebrates butter, bravery, and believing in oneself, all excellent things, brilliantly executed. Bon appetit !!!

My Ratings : 8.5/10

PS: Do check Julie's blog, the Julie/Julia Project at http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/