To hear it from Variety‘s Justin Chang, Nora Ephron‘s Julie & Julia is a “self-satisfied foodie fairy tale” that “feels middling, overstuffed and predigested.” He joins the crowd in noting that Meryl Streep‘s “delightfully daffy turn as Julia Child, the woman who demystified French cuisine for American households, is the freshest ingredient.” And yet the film disappoints, he says, by failing to offer “glorious culinary eye candy on the level of Babette’s Feast or Eat Drink Man Woman. Whatever auds make of Julie & Julia, it’s hard to imagine that Child herself, an unapologetic Francophile with one hell of an appetite, would have been much of a fan.”
