Friday, September 04, 2009

Best. Movie. Ever.

We are talking about Julie & Julia.

And, okay, it's not the best movie ever. (First off, no androids. Second, where's Joseph Cotten?) It's a pretty good movie, though, especially if you happen to be moving from Long Island City to Europe. And -- funny thing -- some of us are.

The scenes in LIC are overdone -- it's a great neighborhood in a great city, and any reasonable person would be happy to live here. Amy Adams should stop complaining and explore the best neighborhood in the best city on earth. (Why, she even shops at K & T Meats, around the corner from the Anonymous Rectory. And she may get all pouty-faced about it, but the nice guys at K & T have often slipped us some free sausage for our Easter breakfast).

The scenes in Paris are also overdone. Yes, it's the second-best-city on earth, but it isn't actually Heaven. So when the movie shows actual gates of pearl and a foundation of chrysoprase and jacinth, you know the producers have gone overboard. Still, they do make you want to be very, very good, so that you can go there someday.

But even if the picture is hard on New York and soft on the Frogs, it gets one thing exactly right. This is a little embarrassing, but we're just going to come out and say it, knowing that several readers will get where we're coming from. If a movie can't have androids, and it can't have Joseph Cotten, then there's only one way it can redeem itself, and that's where Julie & Julia shines: Lots of hot, steamy tall-girl-and-short-guy love scenes.

Granted, Mery Streep was wearing lifts, because Hollywood actresses aren't actually allowed to be tall. But Julia Child was a bruiser, and the movie doesn't shy away from that. The producers let her be tall, and they let Paul Child be short, and they let their lifelong romance be tender and sweet and actually surprisingly steamy for a picture which sometimes risks joining the Masterpiece Theatre school of bloodlessly mummified history. They're way hotter than Amy Adams and her whiny guy whose name escapes me but who looks like every other actor his age.

Good movie. But it would still have been better with androids.

7 comments:

Pastor Joelle said...

I LOVED that movie - only complaint is that I wish there was more Julia and less of that whiney Julie.

I enjoyed the movie so much it took me so long to figure out how I was going to review that I thought it was too late...now as usual your blog as got me thinking....

Pastor Joelle said...

Oh and I think you missed the point about the exaggeration of Paris. For Julia it WAS heaven.

Father Anonymous said...

I didn't miss it exactly, I just thought they overplayed their hand. OTOH, it really doesn't take much to sell me on the premise that Paris might be heaven.

Anonymous said...

This is a lovely post! Thanks. web

revcat said...

Picturing you and the lovely Mrs. A. What a perfect person to review this movie! Thinking of you as you prepare to depart...

Diane M. Roth said...

oh, by the way, I read the book, and then heard the "Julia's" was better.

Oh, and I miss Joseph Cotten, too.

Father Anonymous said...

I am, in fact, reading Julia Child's "My Life in France" right now. And enjoying it very much.