Whatever happened to Nora Ephron? At one time, she could bang out a hit chick flick in her sleep. Nowadays, nobody is expecting another When Harry Met Sally... from the former golden girl. Nowadays, we’re just grateful if we don’t need to watch the movie through our fingers. On that note, Julie And Julia marks a significant advance on Ms. Ephron’s last picture. Don’t get too excited; coming after 2005’s benighted Bewitched, infrared footage from a public lavatory would have looked like a step in the right cinematic direction.
The phrase ‘game of two halves’ might have been coined for this uneven diptych. The Julia of the title is Julia Childs, the irrepressible TV chef who flirted with espionage before teaching America how to cook. Almost 50 years after its publication, her book, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, remains a bestseller.
Nora Ephron’s account of Ms. Childs’ time at the Le Cordon Bleu is, thanks to a suitably ostentatious performance from Meryl Streep, no small delight. Sadly, the film is intertwined with a second, lackluster narrative. The Julie of the title is Julie Powell, a blogger who spends 365 days working her way through Mastering The Art Of French Cooking. She writes about her experiences online and bickers with her husband. And, erm, that’s about it really.
It would take one horribly underwritten character study to make Amy Adams, possibly this planet’s most likeable talent, to seem drab and uncharismatic. Julie is just such a part and much, much less. Can her real-life equivalent really be so whiny and narcissistic?
It’s enough to unbalance an already flimsy confection. Scenes set in the fifties depict a woman who cheerfully ignores all the odds stacked against her, who trains with the greatest chefs in France, who spends years perfecting a 734-page classic. The contemporary moments depict some moronic New Yorker who cries if she burns a casserole. 
Scrape the black bits off and get on with it woman. You’re ruining the movie.