The joy of Julia

Meryl Streep’s grand depiction of cooking icon Child dominates Julie and Julia | Meghan Keane

Columbia Pictures

The screen adaptation of Julie Powell's book Julie and Julia may have better been titled The Joy of Julia. Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child brings the cooking guru's joie de vivre to life with such relish that it's hard to find room for the other side of the story.

Child's introduction of French cuisine to the American palate and kitchen was all the more memorable for the outsized personality and package in which it came. Child's enthusiasm for food and her husband are more than worthy of a screen adaptation.

Here she is just one half of the story, however. The impetus for the film is the book that Powell penned after spending a year cooking and blogging her way through Child's seminal work Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Filmmaker Nora Ephron's screenplay pairs the lives of the two women, and while that structure helps give the film shape, it also manages to highlight the ways that Child's life (and Streep's depiction of her) outshines the Powell story line.