I put off seeing this movie because I assumed I knew what it was like and what it was about, but I was wrong.

What I expected was a humorous, lightweight, superficial movie about yuppie self-absorption and angst; but what I got was a funny movie that was only superficially lightweight. Julie & Julia delivers a powerful and serious message about the relationship between imagination and confidence, and about how the relationships women form with each other, both real and imaginary, can transform a self-image and change a life. 

It doesn’t hurt that Amy Adams and Meryl Streep are absolutely stellar in their respective roles.

Amy Adams is perfect in the role of an underemployed English major who decides to cook all 545 recipes in Julia Child’s French Cooking manifesto in the space of 365 days and to blog about it while she does so. Adams lacks both confidence and accomplishment, but what she lacks in drive she more than makes up for in self-involved fretting. This is painful to watch, but the pain she feels is important to the storyline. We are meant to feel it with her and feel it fully so as to better appreciate the triumph when Adams emerges intact (and published) on the other side.

Streep makes you believe she is Julia Child, and what’s more, she makes you love Julia Child. Streep in this film is a better Julia Child than the real Julia Child ever was, and that’s saying something, since the real Julia Child was pretty amazing. This aspect of Streep’s performance relates directly to the key message of the movie, which is that the people who live in our imaginations are very often much larger and more generous and wonderful than even the best people are in the external world.

Streep is a smallish, fairly short woman whereas Child was substantially built and well over 6 feet tall. In many of the scenes in Julie & Julia Streep seems to tower over husband Stanley Tucci, although in real life she is much shorter and smaller than he is. This effect isn’t just a function of camera angles but rather due in part to the way Streep so masterfully projects the larger-than-life essence of Julia Child—so much so in fact that she seems to grow larger (in every way) before our very eyes.

As a blogger and writer of ‘content’ for the web, I could relate to the bubble Amy Adams enters when she starts her blog, and also to her near-detachment from reality and its ultimately negative consequences. Bloggers are stereotyped as pajama-clad, antisocial basement dwellers for good reason; and it takes a certain persistence and spunk to avoid being eaten alive by the web when you write for it.

On the other hand, the flood of lucrative book, movie, and interview offers that come flooding in will not be at all familiar to 98 out of 100 bloggers who go see the movie. Julie& Julia is based on a true story, but it is not based on a typcial story.

The real story here is not that blogging can turn a call center rep into a solvent, published writer (which very rarely happens) but rather that a compelling female role model can turn a diffident girl into a confident woman.

Oh yes—and a darn good cook.

Now that’s a lesson worth learning.

Bon Appetit!