Culinary sisterhood

Julie & Julia does it right. A consummate entertainment that echoes the rhythms and attitudes of classic Hollywood, it's a satisfying throwback to those old-fashioned movie fantasies where impossible dreams do come true. And, in this case, it really happened. Twice.

Starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and written and directed by Nora Ephron, this film adroitly combines two separate stories told by two different books.

The first is Julia Child's, My Life in France, a memoir by the celebrated cook, teacher and writer. The second memoir, Julie & Julia, follows writer Julie Powell as she works her way through a self-imposed quest: cooking all 524 recipes in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the space of one 364-day year.

Both women are unstoppable forces searching for something worth their involvement, and both find that cooking completes them, makes them feel alive in ways wonderful and unforeseen.

It's also worth noting that these two stories are tales, so to speak, of sisters doing it for themselves. This is the rare Hollywood film where it's the men who are the support team, not the women.Julie & Julia is very much a female coming to power story.

Herself a passionate cook, Ephron shares with her protagonists a deep appreciation for the pleasures of the stove. Although Julie & Julia is a film about love and accomplishment as well as cooking, it's especially animated by a genuine enjoyment of food as one of life's warmest and most pleasing satisfactions.

As felicitous as the choice of Ephron was her decision to cast Streep in the Julia Child role, who outdoes herself here in a comic-dramatic role that is not only enormously funny but also trickier than it may seem at first.

That's because with her inimitable voice and unmistakable mannerisms, Child was simultaneously a real person and a kind of caricature, a personality so extreme it's initially hard to separate the clip we see of Dan Aykroyd's Saturday Night Live impersonation from the real thing.

Streep makes crossing this chasm look simple, easily conveying Child's phenomenal energy and relishing the contradictions of the character. This is a performance to cherish and enjoy.

Meanwhile, in a universe far, far away and 50 years in the future, we meet a woman facing a different set of challenges. The year is 2002 and Julie Powell (Adams) is a once-promising young writer who now sits in a cubicle at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp fielding phone calls from malcontents.

Frustrated by her job and her power broker friends and encouraged by her husband, Julie comes up with the idea of tackling Childs' recipes and recording her progress in the then-new arena of blogging. Like her role model, she faces down obstacles and perseveres to the happy ending we feel she deserves.

Although a bit overshadowed by Streep (who isn't?), the gifted Adams is essential in making this two-part story work, turning Julie into someone we always care about no matter what shenanigans she is going through.