'Julie & Julia': Meryl Streep really cooks in imperfect Nora Ephron film

MOVIE REVIEW

Nora Ephron's "Julie & Julia" is one-half delightful and one-half disappointing; luckily, the delightful part stays with you while the rest fades away.

An ode to food, obsession and finding one's bliss, it's the story of two real-life women, living in different times: burgeoning chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep), merrily learning the art of French cooking in 1950s Paris, and unhappy secretary Julie Powell (Amy Adams), making her way through Child's masterpiece cookbook in the present day and occasionally moaning about her meaningless life before finding fulfillment in cooking and blogging.

So, guess which is the delightful part? No kidding. Streep is utterly delicious as Child, burbling with joie de vivre and trilling her lines in a voice that wanders all the way up the scale and back again, having clearly enjoyed the trip.

Julia adores her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci); adores France; and adores French food. "French people eat French food every single day! I can't get over it!" she enthuses to Paul. Her sighs (they're rare) are little tempests; her laughs are a party in themselves.

Is it any wonder that we quickly resent being zapped from Child's sun-splashed world to Powell's dark apartment? Poor Amy Adams is stuck playing a Meg-Ryan-in-"You've-Got-Mail" type (another Ephron film): a perky, wholesome young thing who gets occasionally teary but is nonetheless adorable.

I'm not sure who this Julie Powell is, and why all her friends are so much richer and nastier than she is, but she clearly isn't much like the real Powell, whose writings reveal a far funnier, more grown-up and more interesting (and, for that matter, far more profane) person. Julie's life here seems very mundane and un-cinematic; we watch her type and wish we were back in France.

And it's hard to connect to Julie's cooking triumphs, when Julia's are so much more operatic. Child practices slicing on a mountain of onions, learns to flip an omelet with panache, and meticulously works out the details of her book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" with co-authors Simone Beck (Linda Emond) and Louisette Bertholle (Helen Carey).

Streep wonderfully channels Child's slightly bulky awkwardness, her warmth ("Julia brings out the best in a polecat," her husband wrote), and her unselfconscious, hearty charm on camera. "I'm just going to have to throw this out and start all over again!" she beams, after a recipe goes awry.

The film finds many parallels between the two women, some of which seem a bit forced: They both have loving husbands; they have the same orange Le Creuset pan; they are both, in early midlife, seeking a passion.

But while Powell's story in real life is inspiring — that cooking project became a lifeline, letting her achieve her dream of becoming a professional writer — on screen she's diminished, set against someone far more charismatic.

Watch "Julie & Julia" for the delicious food (the sole meunière, in an early sequence, is to die for), for the pretty French settings, but most of all for Streep, whose Julia chirps "Bon appétit!" in a way that goes straight to our hearts.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com