You can’t get much more mainstream than “Julie & Julia,” a feel good summer of 2009 release starring Meryl Streep, directed by Nora Ephron and aimed at the kind of broad female audience a $40 million production and August release date is always aimed at. “Julie & Julia” ain’t no edgy indie, ain’t no Oscar bait, and yet throughout the last two-thirds, the screenplay (written by Ephron) salts the proceedings with one gratuitous and divisive shot at Republicans after another. And for no reason that serves the overall story. The insults are so jarring and out-of-place that it’s not far-fetched to assume that Ephron’s conscious goal was to spoil the good time of those unsuspecting moviegoers who made the dual mistake of paying the price of admission and not voting for Obama.
I missed “Julie & Julia” when it was first released … kind of on purpose. Meryl Steep’s acting of late — well, the last 15 years, has become increasingly unbearable to sit though — which is why God invented Redbox. For a buck, I’ll try most anything — except sushi.
Surprisingly, both me and the misses (whose birthday is today — Happy Birthday, Pretty Wife!) were immediately drawn into what started out as a well-structured and charming based-on-a-true-story about two women in two different eras learning to love the art of cooking and coming of age as writers.
Set in post-war France, Streep plays Julia Child. She’s married to an American diplomat (the always superb Stanley Tucci) and finds herself increasingly restless with all the time she has on her hands. In love with the local cuisine, she decides to fill the hours with a French cooking class and the rest as they say is history.
Set in post 9/11 New York (specifically 2002), Amy Adams (channeling Meg Ryan in a big way) is Julie Powell (who wrote the novel upon which the film is based), a frustrated bureaucrat with a loving husband and an unfinished manuscript who decides she needs a project that will help her to learn some self-discipline. That task ends up being cooking her way through all 524 of Julia Child’s recipes over the course of 365 days, and blogging about it at Salon.com.
Throughout, the film cuts back and forth between both stories, connecting the lives of the two women as they share somewhat similar struggles to discover their voice and a place in the world with the help of supportive and patient husbands. If you look too closely, you’ll see how trite the stakes are. But like I said, this is a mainstream film aiming to take you away into a couple hours of escapism. To Ephron’s credit, she doesn’t pretend any of this matters, but for a director working in an industry we’re told constantly is driven only by profit and the desire for big box office, she sure went out of her way to needlessly alienate conservatives.
The gratuitous Republican bashing gets off to a grand start early in the second act during a reunion scene with Julia and her sister. The whole point of this scene is not to move the main story but to let us know that Julia’s father is a “Pasadena Republican” and supporter of the dreaded Senator Joseph McCarthy. This of course is the set up. The punchline occurs later when we meet the old man, are reminded again of his Republicanism, and discover that he is nothing more than a one-dimensional caricature of a stuffy, harumphing, disapproving right winger.
Peppered throughout, as well, are awkward moments of exposition to assure moviegoers that each one of our likable and sympathetic characters are Democrats.
Later, things really go off the rails when an out-of-nowhere subplot develops involving Julia’s husband and his awful persecution at the hands of those awful red-baiters. Because it never goes anywhere and has zero connection with the main story, both the dark and self-important tone and the self-conscious left-wing proselytizing of these shoe-horned scenes stop the film in its tracks.
For anyone who pays attention, it’s obvious that throughout Hollywood there’s a commandment nailed to every studio gate that reads: Thou Shalt Not Make A Movie Set In The 1950s Without A Tired And Cliched Joseph McCarthy Subplot. For Hollywoodists this commandment is a twofer. Not only does it present an opportunity to bash the right but there’s no subject our modern-day filmmakers are more in love with than themselves.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the end of Ephron saving money on Western Union to deliver her gratuitous anti-Republican messages to audiences who were promised a fluffy summertime couple of hours. Just as the story wraps up, Julie is called into her bureaucratic bosses office for phoning in sick when it was obvious to everyone that she wasn’t. After gently admonishing her for not being honest with him, he reminds her that “a Republican would’ve fired you.”
Julie obviously agrees and we’re left to wonder why what we’re told is an industry driven only by money would go so far as to damage the quality of a $40 million product just to childishly insult half the customers.
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