Like pairing Kobe beef with a side of McDonald's french fries

If there’s a secret ingredient, you can bet it’s butter. Butter makes everything better. And there is absolutely no substitute for it in cooking. Using something like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter is a joke and an insult to cooks everywhere. So the fact that Nora Ephron’s latest concoction, Julie & Julia, doesn’t come out of the oven just right makes one wonder if the director didn’t somehow substitute oleo for the real deal.

Julie & Julia is based on two true stories, one following Julia Child’s rise to culinary magician and Julie Powell’s magical transformation, via the kitchen, from low-level bureaucrat to published writer. Rather than complement each other like fish and chips, the two stories are like pairing Kobe beef with a side of McDonald’s french fries.

Living in a post-9/11 New York trying to help families recover, Julie (Amy Adams) is losing herself in her job; she’s also depressed to find herself moved to Queens to be closer to her husband’s office. So she decides to pursue that most voyeuristic endeavor: a blog. Her hook will be to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s magnum opus, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” preparing 524 recipes in 365 days.

To read the rest of Tim’s review, hop on over to Metro Weekly, where his article is currently running.