Julie & Julia Movie Review - Who's the Real Julie Powell?

2 Girls 1...Movie

The movie Julie and Julia is half about Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams) and Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep). Part of what got me back into writing on my blog was seeing a movie about her blogscapades (did I make a new word?). Her blog was seen, her blog was reviewed, her blog eventually turned into some sort of a money maker in spite of it being simplistic and honestly very plain. It's got plenty of novelty, sure, but really she's just describing her cooking adventures. I'm forcing my opinions on life and love, where's my attention?! (I'm kidding, of course.)

Back to Julie and Julia. Glancing at the real Julie Powell's blog that made her famous, I notice that she seems far more brash than how Amy Adams portrays her in the film. Despite the short haircut in the film, I guess she has to maintain some level of innocence since she did play in a Disney film. Really, how would it look to see this girl...

Picture her cussing at the squirrels...

...dropping f-bombs? While singing and cleaning an apartment with help of birds and rodents? (I wonder if Julie Powell was happy to be played by Amy Adams?)

A quick glance of Julie Powell's real blog: The Julie/Julia Project, is not quite what you might expect after watching the movie. Then again, watching the movie is not quite what you expect after seeing the previews. The previews are exactly what you expect them to show in order to successfully reach a target audience probably full of middle-age women. Wait, I really looked forward to seeing this movie. Is that what I'm becoming? A middle-aged woman? No, not quite yet there.

By the way, if anyone is interested in seeing that film I will not spoil it for you. But I will say that Julie and Julia is, very literally, Julie and Julia. The movie is literally two movies (or stories) semi-intertwined into one.

I really enjoyed learning about Julia Child. Meryl Streep is an excellent Julia Child and even got her voice down beautifully. Unfortunately, since Amy Adams played an until-some-years-ago Unknown, there's not much to compare her to. I don't know if anyone knew of Julie Powell prior to the movie, unless they had already come across her blog. Maybe I'm way off there, since she wouldn't have a movie if it weren't for her blog and her blog wouldn't have become so popular if she didn't have many readers.

Something fascinating - and sad - about finding the real Julie Powell is A) A Google search for "Julie and Julia" produces over 21 million results - and it is not until result #5 that the "Julie/Julia Project" actually appears. Julie and Julia the movie overshadows the Julie/Julia Project blog that (half) the Julie and Julia movie was based off! That's Hollywood for you. B) She appears to have stopped publishing to her fan base long ago from the original site. The last writing was from 2004. She now has a different blog, titled "What Could Happen? Musings from a 'Soiled and Narcisstic Whore'." However, she wrote it on Blogger also - I guess that's a start for me?