[6]

This was the last film from the late Nora Ephron, the rom-com heavy-hitter who directed Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, and wrote the script for When Harry Met Sally. It’s based on two different books (both true stories) and takes a two-pronged approach to storytelling that is cute for a while, but somewhat unsatisfying when it comes to a close.

Half the film is centered around Amy Adams’ character, a bored New Yorker who decides to start a blog where she writes about her experience cooking every single recipe in Julia Childs’ first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The other intercutting half of the storyline features Meryl Streep (in another Oscar-nominated performance) as Child, the famous American chef and TV personality, as she discovers her love of cooking in mid-20th century France. The storylines threaten to connect near the end, but never do. For once, I’d have almost preferred a Hollywood ending instead of the blue balls with which the film leaves you.

Streep, as expected, immerses herself in Child’s persona and gives a bona-fide performance far from caricature. My favorite scenes are between Childs and her sister, played by Glee‘s Jane Lynch. Lynch and Streep, playing two towering women with equally towering personalities, don’t even have to try to chew the scenery — it just leaps into their mouths.

Not a bad film, but it’s hard to get excited about two women cooking across time and space, you know?

With Stanley Tucci.