In Hollywood, there are actors, and there are personalities. Someone like Clint Eastwood is a personality, an icon who will never speak in an accent, wear a prosthetic nose or pretend to cry. But paired with a co-star who can truly act, such as Meryl Streep in "The Bridges of Madison County," a personality can seem like empty calories.

Streep co-stars with another personality in the frothy concoction "Julie & Julia." Amy Adams is a sparkling new presence in American movies, but as a modern-day cook who tries to follow in the footsteps of the legendary Julia Child, she is dimmed by some long shadows.

Child (Streep) was the 6-foot-2-inch wife of a courtly American diplomat (Stanley Tucci) when the couple was dispatched to Paris in 1949. Loud, restless Julia could neither speak French nor boil an egg when her love of the local food led her to a cooking class. Her struggle for acceptance at the male-dominated Cordon Bleu school is worthy of a whole movie itself, and Streep is astonishing, conveying Child's gusto, her quavering voice, even her height (Streep is 5 feet 6 inches tall).

But the parallel story line, in which aimless clerk Julie Powell (Adams) spends a year cooking and blogging about the 524 recipes in Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," is an insubstantial garnish presented as a main course.

Powell lives above a Queens pizzeria with her devoted husband (Chris Messina), and although Adams is adorable, the challenges of baking a souffle seem like hot air compared to the chauvinism and political repression that the Childs faced.

"Julie & Julia" was directed by Nora Ephron ("Sleepless in Seattle") with a light touch that will satisfy an eager audience of female foodies.

But a recipe with more spice and more meat could do for the chick flick what Child did for French cooking: make it accessible to everyone.