JULIE & JULIA (Julie Powell) - July 27/09

Though it did improve towards the end, Julie & Julia is mostly a surprisingly tedious story about one woman's efforts at cooking her way through a Julia Child cookbook. Maybe it's because I'm not a "foodie," but there was exceedingly little within the book that I found compelling. As a result, my eyes glazed over long passages in which she described the process of cooking an elaborate meal. But even the stuff in which Powell talks about her various friends falls flat. There's just a pervading atmosphere of "who cares?" in the book. To be fair, there are a few highlights - her fixation on David Strathairn and the CBS news encounter - but really, this is the book equivalent of one of those documentaries that only the author's immediate family could admire. ** out of ****