I gained 15 pounds watching Julie & Julia. Writer-director Nora Ephron's latest paean to great gals and their professional and romantic foibles is not for food-phobes. There haven't been this many butter/wine reductions, olive oil-drenched crostinis, and chocolate thingies per screen minute since Big Night and Like Water for Chocolate. Odes to cooking are few and far between in our weight-conscious world and it's one of the reasons Julie & Julia is, largely, an unexpected treat.

The film is based on the life of Julia Child - arguably America's most famous celebrity chef ever - and the yearlong experiment by writer Julie Powell that saw her slog through Child's 1961 instructional Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Seesawing between modern day Queens and post-war France, Julie & Julia is ostensibly about two women and their search for personal fulfillment.

Paul and Julia Child (Stanley Tucci and Meryl Streep) arrive in Paris in 1949 when Paul, a diplomat, is posted there. Both develop a taste for the local cuisine (their first meal is a fried fish swimming in butter, yum!), and being uninterested in most "ladies" hobbies, Julia enrolls herself at the Cordon Bleu. It's the first step in taking gastronomy to the masses and the subsequent fame that had her distinctive trill imitated everywhere.

In 2000, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is a powerless cubicle drone and aspiring writer that loves to eat and cook. She idolizes Child, and when her husband Eric (Chris Messina) suggests she start a blog to make her mark on the world, she opts to document her jaunt through the 524 recipes in Child's classic volume - replete with kitchen disasters.

Films structured as two (or more) separate but connected parts are often saddled with a weak link, and that happens here too. Streep and Child are each so iconic in their respective fields it makes you wish Julie & Julia was simply Julia. Streep is (yawn) excellent as the 6'2" Child, if a tiny bit mannered, and she and Tucci (star of Big Night and Streep's co-star in The Devil Wears Prada) make for a wholly believable couple, devoted to each other in their sadly childless marriage. They fall into a natural, nuanced rhythm and never let it falter. For all of Julia's overwhelming personality, Tucci never allows Paul to fade into the woodwork. We're reminded of just how ingrained Child became in popular culture when Julie and Eric watch Dan Aykroyd's classic Saturday Night Live skit. Streep brings her back to life flawlessly and makes us crave more of it.

The "Julia" half of the film is also blessed with a raft of supporting characters that manage to stand out even when they're compelled to share the screen with Streep. Jane Lynch (currently the best part of the overrated Glee) as Dorothy, Child's equally towering sister, and Linda Emond (North Country), as co-author Simone Beck, both burn through their roles with amusing flourish that never slips into condescending mimicry.

The "Julie" section of the film is more hit-and-miss. Adams again plays the kind of wide-eyed ingenue that made her a star after Enchanted. She infuses all her characters with a wispy, optimistic charm that's already starting to get tired. It was inappropriate in Doubt, and it's out of place here. Julie is a narcissistic wannabe (at least in the film), who embarks on her great journey because she doesn't have the kind of high-powered career her friends do - and she wants it desperately. Playing catch-up is fine, but that drive conflicts with Adams' sweet perkiness, something she can't seem to shake. She is the new Meg Ryan, and that's not necessarily a compliment.

Julie's story also lacks the obstacles that Julia had to contend with. Child was the consummate outsider: too tall, too American, too female in a largely male industry. Those barriers lay the foundation for the drama any film needs and give the quiet moments of frustration, self-doubt, and disappointment that much more heft. The most conflict Julie deals with is a lingering rumor that Child herself finds her project and blog distasteful. A greater examination of the impact her mentor's negative opinion has on Julie would have been a welcome bit of humanization. To be fair to Adams, she doesn't really have anyone for Julie to bounce off, with the exception of Eric and her closest friend Sarah (Mary Lynn Rajskub, doing her 24 schtick).

But that's Ephron with her tendency to fixate on neurotic modern women without giving them a defining context. In Child Ephron has a real person with a real story to work with, and it's part of the reason that half is the bigger success. Not insignificantly Ephron's strongest film (as writer) was another biopic that also starred Streep: Silkwood. Their collaboration this time is charming if relatively lightweight. You'll go for Streep and stay for the boeuf bourguignon - even if everyone does call it "boof."

Julie & Julia opened in Hong Kong Thursday.

(HK Edition 11/28/2009 page8)