Julie (Amy Adams) is sick and tired of her New York apartment, supportive husband (Chris Messina) and job helping 9/11 victims so decides to make every recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child (Meryl Streep) and blog about it. Meanwhile we find out more about Julia, and how she ended up bringing French cooking to America.

This is a love letter to cooking as it juxtaposes the bored housewife of yesteryear with the employed but unfulfilled modern woman, both of whom find a way of expressing themselves in the kitchen. Yet the Julie story line in particular is the most spectacularly inane subject for a film since the one about that lady who invented a mop.

Nigel and Nigella

The issues she faces are so laughably non-existent that its hard to warm to her through her utter absorption in first world problems. In one scene she flies off the handle because the drain is blocked, she’s put on an imperceptible amount of weight and has to bone a duck. And I did wonder what kind of loser would waste so much time writing some blog that hardly anyone reads.

The Julia sections are better, mainly because they have Meryl Streep in, hamming it up as the Widdecombe-voiced chef, and are about a character who actually did something, even if the stakes could still comfortably slide under a cubicle door. Attempts to bring in Mr Child’s (Stanley Tucci) investigation during the Red Scare just feel irrelevant. The fact it has the weight of a meringue could be excusable if it was funny or entertaining, but the only laugh is when Julie finds our Julia hates her. Mauvais appétit!