Last night was one of those rare occasions that the Jim and I had the same thought at the same time.  “Wanna go see Julie & Julia?”  “Seriously?! I was thinking that too!”  We’re both fans of good food, and we both enjoy a movie that might be an interesting flick.  Sadly, we had like NO TIME before the movie to grab a bite to eat so we ended up eating at the sad, but fast Shoney’s down the street.  Then we rushed to the movie theatre only to find out that the parking garage shut down like half their parking spaces for “painting”…only issue – last night downtown was a BUZZ…it was First Friday folks!

So we ended up paying $5.00 for parking nearby and then ran to catch the film.  To our delight, it was a good movie.  A very good movie…mostly thanks to performances by Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, with great turns by Jane Lynch and the always sweet,  Amy Adams.  Essentially the film follows Julia Child and her work to become a chef and then co-craft one of the premier Cookbooks in existence “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”; it cuts between her life journeys, and the journeys of Amy Adam’s character, a worker dealing with people who have suffered from the 9-11 tragedy and her decision to take 1 year to blog her way through tackling all the recipes in the aforementioned cookbook.  While I enjoyed the journey of Julia Child more, I suppose it was primarily because sadly the Julia character has a lot of elements that remind me of my life.  You’d have to see it and know me real well to understand (the husband was commenting during the film regarding the similarities).

The one thing that really stands out is the glorious delights of French cuisine.  It was lush and lovely and makes anyone who likes to cook at all ready to run out and buy the cookbook so I can finally learn how to make a burre blanc.  It made both of us sad that we ate dinner at a Shoney’s.  If you enjoy character studies, life journeys, and rich food…you might like this movie.  Meryl nails Julia Child in many aspects and I lost track a couple of times that I was watching Ms. Streep.

So, if you want to see a nice little film…and then run out to your local Brasserie – check it out!  *** stars out of 4.