Julie & Julia - C-

Meryl Streep can't walk her dog or drop a deuce without getting Oscar buzz and her performance as Julia Child is a great impersonation. But Child was an incredibly annoying and indulgent person and listening to her talk and squeal is like jabbing a rusty screwdriver through your ears. And that's the good half of the film. In the modern day part of the film, Julie (Amy Adams) is a post 9/11 New York phone operator helping people with their grief/problems. She's obsessed with Child and decides to cook each of Child's famous recipes over the course of a year and write about it on her new blog. Adams is adorable but can't overcome the uninteresting and predictable script by Nora Ephron, who also directs . . .

badly. Is it a farce? A screwball comedy? A left-wing takedown of Joseph McCarthy? A period film showing beautiful France in the 1950s? A 9/11 cathartic weepy? A complicated depiction of modern marriage? All of the above? None of the above. It's all over the place and stretched too thin from the very first scene. There's absolutely no substance there - except cooking and eating - and the 2 stories don't connect in any way thematically. Stanley Tucci's effeminate performance as Child's husband and the incredibly condescending music don't help matters. C-