So many movies with female characters are about finding a man and then living happily ever after, I thought it was very refreshing that both Julie and Julia were married to good guys but they weren’t “complete.” They were looking for something else, and found it themselves . . . with a little help from their friends, etc.

Also, Julia’s childlessness was lovingly handled and heartwrenching.

And as a struggling blogger, I was just impressed that Julia (real and fiction) was able to both cook and blog consistently, every day!

But I do agree with the general consensus: the Julia Child sections were especially brilliant; I loved seeing a strong woman portrayed in a nuanced and funny way. Although the Julie Powell character may not have been as ‘strong’ (which may be why some of us don’t like her- we don’t admire her like we do Julia/Meryll), she was relateable as a downtrodden modern gal.

As a whole, I thought the film was… delicious.

It was lazy of me to say that Julia didn’t make mistakes – it was her attitude about her mistakes that made the real difference.

For me, the Julia Child part of the film was an exercise in nostalgia. “Who in today’s day and age has the same joie de vivre, innate optimism, charm, and ebullience?” the film kept asking, and the answer was, “no one since Julia!”. Now, the thing needed for successful nostalgia is a sense of contrast, which is what I felt the Julie parts of the film provided in buckets. However, I agree that the Powell section might have been unnecessary, and that maybe the nostalgia would have worked so much better (e.g. been more of an escape) if the Powell storyline wasn’t hanging around like a wet blanket.

Except that Julia made mistakes all the time. And she let ‘em roll of her back. Scorch the scallops? Whoops, just scrape that stuff off. Spill a little salt? Just toss some over your shoulder and keep going. Drop the chicken on the floor? Pick it up, rinse it off, and truss it.

That said, I think (even though I haven’t seen the film) you’re right. Someone earlier mentioned the joy/pleasure that Julia and her husband got from their relationship and from food and travel, compared to our modern day couple, who are pinched and clenchy about shit that just really doesn’t matter. We don’t make way more mistakes than Julia; we just make way too big a deal out of them. (And yeah, that’s a kind of narcissism.)

Further to that, I didn’t think Powell’s husband was protrayed as perfect – he himself (in the film) railed against being pegged as “perfect” just because he had a personality that was normally wuite easy to get along with. What I got from the film was that he wanted to be the cranky, stubborn, defensive one sometimes and was resentful that Powell cast him in the hero role.

As much as I loved the celebration of food and eating, what made me so happy with this movie was that it was a romantic comedy that wasn’t about silly dating schemes or other tired tropes–and that it did so well in the theaters shows that yes, there IS a market for movies like this–completely refreshing.