shoop and julie & julia

So I'm interrupting my TV musings to catch up to the movie that returns Meryl Streep to the Oscar race, Julie & Julia. Nora Ephron does something really interesting, and perhaps even a little shocking, when the movie enters its final third.

She torpedoes half of her movie. Just blows it into oblivion. And what's even more interesting, I think Ephron might have done it on purpose.

You probably already know this movie as The Really Interesting Story about the Fascinating Lady and The Really Crappy Story about the Incredibly Self-Involved, Boring Lady. And it's all true--Meryl Streep Does it Again as Julia Child, getting the familiar mannerisms down and making us see a real, living person up there on screen. Meanwhile, Stanley Tucci gets the Good Sport Award as Child's husband, whose job is pretty much to adore Meryl just like it used to be Henry Fonda's job to adore Bette Davis. And he's damned good at it. It's great fun to watch. And then there's the Other Story--whiny, why-hasn't-my-brilliance-been-recognized blogger Julie Powell (a super-glum Amy Adams) cries about living in Queens, cries about messing up her kitchen, cries about, well, pretty much everything, while Chris Messina has Tucci's job as patient husband, but he's clearly, and understandably, not having as much fun. After a lot of back-and-forth between the titular figures, Child faces a monumental setback to her epic cookbook, years in the planning, writing, rewriting, and revising. "Well, boo hoo. What next?" she says brightly, and BAM! All the Julie Powell stuff is obliterated in a single stroke. Why, we immediately exclaim, have we been watching a good half-hour of Whiny McWhiner when we can be watching a plucky, eccentric, can-do heroine who has just rendered an indelible parody of the whole other half of the movie--boo hoo, what next, indeed!

And Ephron must have seen that. She set up her parallels between the heroines with great care and craft, with more than a dash of smacking us over the head. Did she really make one-half of her movie a ponderous slog on purpose so that the Julia Child stuff would come off more wonderfully? It would seem to be a suicidal idea, but check out the results--a nice chunk of box-office change and the umpteenth Oscar nomination for Streep.

The other possibility is probably more likely, but more depressing--there's really an audience that would root for a self-absorbed, whiny rhymes-with-witch and see her as something of a role model. Maybe that's a generational thing. I'd feel better about it if I could be convinced that eventually Generation Whine will be able to laugh at themselves.

But no, I'm not convinced.