Julie and Julia

My wife loves Meryl Streep (what woman doesnt?) She has some sort of appeal for women, similar to Glenn Close and Sarah Jessica Parker. All 3 women do not embody what I would consider to be good looks (or even female looks) but are thought of by other women to be attractive. I don't understand it, but it helps explain why I ended up at a showing of Julie & Julia last Saturday with our good friends Jon and Bri.

In all fairness, the movie was okay. It was hardly action packed or suspenseful but it still had its moments. I did have a few issues with the film that distracted me. I will list them below, so that you can be aware of them before watching it.

Meryl Streep is meant to portray a 37 to roughly 45 year old woman, with a husband who is 10 years her senior. This bothered me the entire movie because Meryl Streep looked 60 years old, while her husband looked 10 years younger than her. I realize there needs to be some artistic flexibility given to movies but this is pretty distracting. I felt extremely uncomfortable during every sexually suggestive scene. This could have also been caused by the fact that the husband was more feminine than Streep.

Another annoying distraction was the 2002 Julie's haircut. What the...??? I realize the real life Julie has that haircut, but did they really need to insert it into the movie for "realism"? I doubt everything else was perfectly portrayed in the movie, so why stick to making your leading actress look like a mop? I never understood the practice of making attractive people "ugly" by giving them glasses or a bad haircut.

One other noticable flaw, was the fact that the characters (in their late 20s and early 30s) ate french food nonstop over the course of a year and did not put on a single pound. I don't know about most people in my age demographic, but by the end of month 3 I would be bulging out of my clothes and as lethargic as a sloth.

Finally, the ending sucked. This was meant to be a feel-good movie but the entire high created by the movie was destroyed by the last 10 minutes. Again, accuracy doesn't always have to be prominant in an big screen adaption. Why would they bother saying that Julia Childs thought her blog was disrespectful and rude? It completely undermines Julie's view of Julia and destroys the protrayal of Julia Child's character!!

It was still an enjoyable enough watch, something that most people could feel good about paying $1 to see. To be honest, watching Meryl Streep on a smaller TV screen would be preferable than on a big movie screen. This ranks in my top 10 worst movies to possibly see in IMAX.