Reviews
The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
"Julie & Julia is among the most heart-warming, feelgood films of the year, and so joyously obsessed with food that it might be described as a feed-good movie."
11/09/2009
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The New Yorker
David Denby
"“Julie & Julia” is one of the gentlest, most charming American movies of the past decade. Its subject is less food as something to cook than food as the binding and unifying element of dinner parties, friendship, and marriage."
24/08/2009
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The New York Times
A. O. Scott
"The unevenness of “Julie and Julia” is nobody’s fault, really. It arises from an inherent flaw in the film’s premise. Julie is an insecure, enterprising young woman who found a gimmick and scored a book contract. Julia is a figure of such imposing cultural stature that her pots and pans are displayed at the Smithsonian. The fact that Ms. Ephron, like Julie herself, is well aware of this gap does not prevent the film from falling into it. All the filmmaker’s artful whisking can’t quite achieve the light, fluffy emulsion she is trying for."
07/08/2009
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The Observer
Philip French
"There is no question that the liberating adventures of Julia in Paris are more interesting than the relatively trivial travails of Julie in New York, just as no one could think Julie's achievements as on a par with Julia's. Yet the two lives hang together and the experiences of their heroines placed alongside each other offer revelations about social and cultural change over the past 60 years, from the staid age of the telex and the manual typewriter to the ubiquity of the personal computer and the mobile phone."
13/09/2009
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The Daily Telegraph
Sukhdev Sandhu
"Stephen Goldblatt’s sunny photography and Alexandre Desplat’s rippling score add to the bonhomie. Ephron helps herself by working from strong material, going easy on the romantic comedy elements of the stories, and not straining too hard for laughs. She also includes blue notes — about Child’s thwarted desire for children and, as a nonagenarian, her lack of interest in the younger woman’s blog — that give the film deeper dimensions still. It’s easily her best since When Harry Met Sally."
10/09/2009
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Empire Magazine
Angie Errigio
"Oh, yum! A delectable new entry in the generally gentle, genial and tantalising mini-genre of food movies — “Nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the oven” — this scrumptious biographical comedy-drama also tells us that anyone can find herself and fulfilment with a little determination and joie de vivre."
02/11/2009
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The Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
""Julie & Julia" does it right. A consummate entertainment that echoes the rhythms and attitudes of classic Hollywood, it's a satisfying throwback to those old-fashioned movie fantasies where impossible dreams do come true. And, in this case, it really happened. Twice."
07/08/2009
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The Sunday Times
Cosmo Landesman
"That said, Ephron’s film is a great romcom because, unlike so many others in the genre, it dares to show older people in love. It captures the intoxicating exuberance of love — be it with food or a man — and does it in a way that isn’t a syrupy fantasy. You end up feeling a kind of envy for these women and the joy they have in their lives. Then we have the lovely performances."
13/09/2009
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Variety
Justin Chang
"It should come as no surprise that Meryl Streep's delightfully daffy turn as Julia Child, the woman who demystified French cuisine for American households, is the freshest ingredient in "Julie & Julia." Otherwise, this middling melange of Child biopic and contempo dramedy feels overstuffed and predigested as it depicts two ladies who found fame and fulfillment in their respective eras by cooking and writing about it."
24/07/2009
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Channel 4 Film
Matt Glasby
"Wilde survives intact - and with some flair - although the results will do more for sixth-form literature students and their teachers than for film connoisseurs."
02/11/2009
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The Times
Toby Young
"Julie & Julia is a slick, well-oiled machine and it may even be a contender for Best Picture at next year’s Academy Awards. But it would have been even better if Ephron had spent a little more time focusing on her ideas and a little less on boeuf bourguignon and tarte tatin. It’s a perfectly satisfactory soufflé when it could have been a rich, meaty stew."
11/09/2009
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Time Out
Nina Caplan
"The result is a film that’s charming, funny – especially when Streep is on screen, broadcasting her superb impression of the tall, charismatic, high-pitched Child – but leaves you with a dissatisfaction with modern life that no culinary masterpiece can relieve."
10/09/2009
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The Times
Tom Charity
"Amy Adams’s game but nervy Julie is predictably steamrollered by Meryl Streep’s tart, juicy and vivacious interpretation of the doyenne of American TV chefs. Still, the film goes beyond the guts and glory of a classic boeuf bourguignon, gelling on the validation that these very different women find in writing about food. See it for Streep, and plan on fine dining after."
12/09/2009
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The Financial Times
Simon Schama and Karl French
"Watching Julie and Julia, which follows a young New Yorker working her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, feels like being force-fed a dish of candied pecans, smothered in honey, washed down with a bottle of Eiswein. By the end of it you’re screaming for a tumbler of vinegar cut with lemon juice and a nice sprinkling of asafoetida."
09/09/2009
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
"Nora Ephron's latest film is a dose of stodgy comfort food in the form of a complacent, mediocre film, with an exasperatingly flaccid and anti-climactic ending designed to fudge the unfortunate fact that one of the two characters in the title actually hates the other – for reasons that are never explored, for fear of spoiling the bland feelgood flavour."
10/09/2009
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
"Streep gets by on eccentricity, but the Adams character is your average nervy egomaniac whose idea of a crisis is a cancelled dinner party or spilling a boeuf bourguignon. Tweeness and whimsy eclipse any spark of thoughtfulness. The resulting confection is two hours of drama-less self-congratulation."
11/09/2009
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