Love and food, the basics of life, two passions common to nearly everyone on the planet, the film offers them up like hors d'oeuvres never ceasing to circle the room. It's gentle, tender, warm, and sprinkled generously with tasty bits of humor.

During the year preceding her 30th birthday Julie challenges herself to cook every recipe in a Julia Child cook book, she blogs about each meal. Intermittently, this story is balanced by Julia Child's Parisian experience -- the origin story of her fame. Streep's portrayal of the chef-icon smokes! And Tucci endears as her encouraging hubby. They make a charming couple with an on screen love that'll melt audiences, seasoned with the occasional pinch of sizzling passion. Child turns out to be quite an interesting character on her own. Just for fun, filmmakers chose to include an old clip from SNL, Dan Ackroyd's cutting imitation of Julia will crack you up.

Julie and hubby have a challenging love story of their own. Amy Adams and Chris Messina make for another cute couple. Still most of the cooking is done in the kitchen. Foodies and non-foodies alike should enjoy this oven-warm film. That said, I may be biased. I felt like I was watching my life. My gf is quite a foodie herself, cute, cooking, blogging, obsessing.

She loved the film, and I certainly enjoyed it as well, however, I'd have made a change in the recipe. The film introduces us to Julie in her job as a hotline operator, offering assistance to those immediately affected by 911 in New York. Though peripheral to the main story, my curiosity had been piqued. I would have liked to see more of this integrated in the script, especially how Julie's cooking success affected her confidence and positiveness in the workplace, with her callers.

Interestingly enough, this film about food and marriage is really a marriage of two film projects based on books: "My Life in France" by Julia Child and (the other) "Julie and Julia" by Julie Powell.

-- Books by Author/Illustrator Ross Anthony --