Meryl Streep and butter will fix your Sunday blues better than any productivity hack ever could.
- Julie and Julia features Meryl Streep in arguably the warmest performance of her career.
- The film grossed 94 million dollars worldwide and holds an 76 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
- It follows two women finding purpose and joy through cooking across fifty years of history.
- Director Nora Ephron made this her final film, and it shows all of her warmth and wisdom.
There is a scene in Julie & Julia where Julia Child tastes a perfectly cooked sole meunière for the first time in Paris, and her face does something that takes a moment to fully process. It is not just happiness. It is the specific expression of someone who has just discovered what they were put on this earth to do. Julie and Julia weaves together the real-life stories of culinary legend Julia Child and blogger Julie Powell, whose decision to cook all 524 recipes in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days gave her something she had been missing: a reason to get up in the morning and a sense of purpose she could build an entire life around. On a Sunday evening when Monday feels like a wall rather than a door, that is precisely the energy this film delivers.
Directed by the late, deeply missed Nora Ephron, who also gave the world Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, Julie & Julia operates on a simple but remarkably effective premise. The film moves between two parallel timelines, Julia Child in 1950s Paris discovering French cuisine and the joy of cooking professionally, and Julie Powell in 2002 Queens finding her footing as a blogger and cook, and the rhythm between them is perfectly calibrated. When one timeline needs a lift, the other provides it. When one character feels stuck, the other is mid-triumph. It is a film structured like a good meal, balanced, generous, and deeply satisfying from the first scene to the last. The film moves at a pace that feels indulgent rather than rushed, with warm lighting, flour on the counter, butter melting in a pan, and late-night recipe testing that turns into quiet triumph.
Meryl Streep as Julia Child is one of the most purely joyful performances in the history of cinema. Full stop. She plays Child with infectious enthusiasm for life’s pleasures and an absolute refusal to be diminished by anyone who doubts her, capturing both the towering warmth and the remarkable determination of a woman who published her first cookbook at 49 and became America’s most beloved culinary figure. Stanley Tucci as Julia’s devoted husband Paul is equally wonderful, and their scenes together, warm, playful, and affectionate in a way that feels entirely effortless, are the most comforting thing in the entire film. Amy Adams as Julie Powell grounds the contemporary timeline with a relatability that every person who has ever felt underestimated, understimulated, or quietly lost in their own life will recognise immediately. The film is built around daily rituals and the idea that finding meaning doesn’t require a dramatic life change but rather one small, deliberate act repeated with intention until it becomes something larger than you expected. That is not a small idea. On a Sunday evening, it is everything.
What makes Julie and Julia so effective as a comfort film is that both women succeed not by being ruthless or strategic but by being genuinely passionate about something and showing up for it consistently, which is the most honest and useful thing any film can tell you before a Monday morning. The food looks extraordinary throughout. The Paris sequences are visually gorgeous. And Ephron’s script, warm and witty in equal measure, wraps around you like a cashmere blanket by the final act. You will finish it wanting to cook something. You will finish it wanting to start something. Both are excellent ways to begin a week.
Julie & Julia is available to stream on Netflix and to rent across all major platforms. Pour yourself something good, make sure there is butter somewhere in the house, and press play. Monday will arrive regardless. You might as well meet it with flour on your hands and Meryl Streep in your heart!
Director: Nora Ephron
Writer: Nora Ephron
Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, Linda Emond, Jane Lynch
Release Date: August 7, 2009
