Maximum Meryl

You Can Now Watch Julie and Julia Without Julie

Rex USA
Viva la Internet!

In Julie & Julia, Meryl Streep played an ebullient, classy and eminently watchable version of America’s first master chef, Julia Child. The 2009 Nora Ephron film detailed Child's life in Paris and burgeoning culinary career against the contrasting life of a twentysomething New Yorker, Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams.

Adams perhaps did her job too well, delivering a spot-on performance as Julie, a moderately depressed writer looking to find redemption in the pages of Child's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But an actor, no matter how talented, can only do so much with the source material and since the part called for being a morose writer determinedly cooking her way through all 524 recipes in Child's cookbook in 365 days, that's what Adams delivered. For those watching the film, though, it felt like the effervescent and inspiring story of the life and times and food of Julia Child kept getting interrupted by a (shudder) blogger—even though that blogger is played by Adams delivering delicious bon mots to her husband, played by the always incredible Chris Messina.

As Decider reported, though, now we can enjoy Julia Child, uninterrupted. An intrepid editor named Adam Goldman has done Streep and Child fans a favor and done his best chef impression and sliced and diced the film into a wholly new film—Julie & Julia minus Julie. The film removes all of Julie's scenes, leaving the world with a delightful hour-long movie all about Julia cooking her way through Paris.

Until we get a full Streep-as-Childs biopic, we'll be watching this edited version while cooking Thanksgiving dinner.