Metacritic reviews

It hooks you up, happily, to your inner top chef.

Julie & Julia makes deboning a duck a feminist act and cooking a great meal a creative triumph. The stakes may not be as high as the kill-or-be-killed suspense of a summer action movie, but the sauces are way tastier.

Streep is astonishing, conveying Child's gusto, her quavering voice, even her height.

As enjoyable as this foodie movie is, you wish it would take a deeper, more nuanced measure of the women who, in two different eras, star in the movie's kitchens.

Julie & Julia is full of holes, but you don't even care when Streep is onscreen.

Julie & Julia is not lacking in entertainment value, especially with the Streep performance. But if the men had been portrayed as more high-spirited, it might have taken on intriguing dimensions.

You know the feeling you get when you make a meal of two mildly savory appetizers that don't quite go together, and you leave you wishing you'd eaten one hefty entrée? That's Julie & Julia. Half an hour later, I wanted to watch another movie.

The movie could have used a few more scenes focusing on Child at work in the kitchen -- a few more scenes with Child doing anything, really.

This middling melange of Child biopic and contempo dramedy feels overstuffed and predigested as it depicts two ladies who found fame and fulfillment in their respective eras by cooking and writing about it.

It was the best of movies. It was the worst of movies. Which is to say: There's half of a great movie in Julie & Julia.