C-

One might think that Steve Zahn had learned a lesson about appearing in daft thrillers after “Joy Ride,” but here he is starring in another. “A Perfect Getaway,” written and directed by David Twohy (“Pitch Black,” “The Chronicles of Riddick”), is a bare-bones story about a newlywed couple, Cliff and Cydney (Zahn and Milla Jovovich), honeymooning in Hawaii, where they find themselves hiking along a mountain path to a remote beach with another couple, Nick (Timothy Olyphant) and Gina (Kiele Sanchez), they meet along the way. As they proceed, they get word that back on the main island the bodies of two tourists have been discovered brutally murdered by another couple, and they come to suspect that Nick and Gina might be the killers. There’s a third set of suspects, Kale and Cleo (Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton), an oddly sinister pair whom Cliff and Gina had dissed when they were hitchhiking but who have caught up with them and are on the path too.

The most positive reading of “Getaway” is that it’s intended as an over-the-top send-up of a bad cat-and-mouse thriller, and certainly it demonstrates a lot of self-awareness of the geriatric conventions of the genre: Cliff’s a screenwriter and Nick a rabid movie fan who spouts endless tales of his own background in Special Ops, and they make regular references to second act reversals and what Nick recalls from his single class in screenplay construction as “red snappers” (meaning, of course, red herrings). But even if one takes it in that light, you have to admit that it wants to have its cake and eat it too, not merely ridiculing the cliches but simultaneously milking them mercilessly to get the expected audience response. The result would be a parody that also wants you to take it seriously.

And without giving away too much of the plot, it has to be said that the obligatory big twist (which, of course, involves identifying the least likely people as the perpetrators) is the sort of move a lot of viewers will consider a cheat, though in its way it’s as fair as what Agatha Christie did in “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.” Or, to use a cinematic example, what Christopher McQuarrie did in “The Usual Suspects.” The difference is that Christie constructed her tale in a way that they resolution could be tossed off in a few paragraphs, and McQuarrie his so that a quick montage could explain things. Twohy requires what seems like twenty minutes of flashbacks to clarify what’s been going on and italicize the clues that he’s been posting along the way.

And then, having given us the big revelation, he forges on for another twenty minutes, piling climax upon climax as the villains try to kill off the remaining good guys (and a few passersby as well) and the violent confrontations pile up. Maybe this is supposed to be a spoof of the usual thriller fare that drags on endlessly as characters supposedly killed off return to life to take up their knives, axes and guns once or twice more. (A giddily inane split-screen moment could be a director’s visual guffaw.) But it’s all staged to generate gasps and shudders as well as laughs, whether the latter are intentional or not. And in the end the movie flounders trying to have it both ways.

But if the audience might not be enjoying themselves, the cast seem to be—understandable, as the shoot involved a paid Hawaiian vacation. Zahn gets the opportunity to show off his zaniness at maximum force, and Olyphant obviously relishes playing a big red herring himself, tossing off what amount to winks and nods throughout. On the distaff side, Sanchez comes off best, playing a redneck with plenty of unexpected talents (like the ability to gut a wild goat). By contrast, Jovovich is stiff; she comes off really irritating in the early scenes, and though later on she loosens up, she remains the quartet’s weakest link. Shelton and Hemsworth do what’s asked of the, oozing menace.

But the real star of “A Perfect Getaway” is Hawaii; the locations are stunning, and they’re captured in impressive widescreen images by Mark Plummer. The rest of the technical credits are top-drawer, too; this may be a simple-minded action shocker, but it’s done up with the same lavishness that a similar project, “The River Wild,” was fifteen years ago (even if its cast boasts nobody of Meryl Streep’s cachet).

Will genre fans take this totally artificial, over-the-top serial-killer movie as a straight thriller, or understand it as the parody one hopes it’s intended to be? I suppose David Twohy won’t much care as long as they fill the theatre.

C+

They say that half a loaf is better than none, but sometimes it’s just not enough. That’s proven by this double biopic, which juxtaposes the story of Julia Child’s sojourn in fifties Paris, based on her recollections about studying French cuisine there, with that of Julie Powell, who gained fame with a blog recording her yearlong project to prepare every one of the more than 500 dishes in Child’s famous “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” (later turned into a book itself). The Child material, buoyed by the performances of Meryl Streep as Julia and Stanley Tucci as her diplomat husband, is corny but charming. But the Powell half, despite Amy Adams’ best efforts, proves pretty much of a drag.

The “contemporary” material traces how Powell (Adams), stuck in a depressing—if, one should note, important job dealing with 9/11 survivors—and a cramped NYC apartment above a Queens pizzeria with her loving husband Eric (Chris Messina), watching her friends succeed while she approaches thirty without having found her own calling, decides on a whim to start a blog (then a new thing) reporting on her attempt to make all the recipes in Child’s magnum opus over the course of 365 days. We follow her progress from unknown to mini-celebrity as the effort progresses, seeing how her obsessive dedication to it puts strains on her real job and her relationship with Eric. Naturally emphasis falls on the most difficult dishes—aspic is a big problem, as is the requirement to toss live lobsters into a pot of steaming water—and there’s a major disaster when Julie’s careful preparation of boeuf bourguignon for an important visitor results in a burnt mess (which is only the first in a string of catastrophes). But though Adams is as always a pleasant presence and Messina offers nice support (as does a cat playing their pet in the seemingly obligatory cute animal scenes), as a whole this part of the picture never really takes off.

Not so with the Child half of the movie, based on her posthumously-published memoir “My Life in France,” which has the feel of one of those upscale British comedies aimed at older female audiences but still fizzes because of the rapport between Streep and Tucci. Streep does an amazing impersonation of Child more than a performance, but why quibble when the impersonation is such fun to watch? Streep gets strong support from Simone Beck and Helen Carey as the French ladies who collaborate with her on the famous cookbook—the two of them have some deliciously catty moments together—and from Jane Lynch as her homely but exuberant sister Dorothy in one sequence. But her true partner is Tucci as Child’s husband, who supports her unreservedly every step of the way. He and Streep worked together beautifully in “The Devil Wears Prada,” and they’re even better here, matching their steps with the deftness and precision of a couple of old vaudeville veterans who’ve been doing routines since the flood. The duo even carry off a subplot concerning a McCarthy-era witch hunt that briefly puts Paul in its sights and leads to his transfer to Germany—something perhaps intended to give the Child story some dramatic heft (like the difficulties in the Powell marriage) but doesn’t succeed.

“Julie & Julia” doesn’t get much pizzazz from Ephron’s direction, which as usual more prosaic than invigorating (slack editing by Richard Marks shares some of the blame), and while the European segments are given a burnished glow by cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt (as is the final back-home Child sequence), the Powell material, perhaps because of the claustrophobic apartment set, is nowhere near as attractively presented. (The same dichotomy is seen in Mark Ricker’s production design, Benjamin John Barraud’s art direction, Susan Bode Tyson’s set decoration and Ann Roth’s costumes.) Curiously for a film that revels in the most luscious of dishes prepared with exquisite care, there’s little sense of the aesthetic of food presentation; the almost sensual visuals that marked pictures such as “Babette’s Feast” and “Like Water for Chocolate” is missing here. And on the aural front, the film boasts one of the least distinctive scores yet from the talented and prolific Alexandre Desplat. Perhaps in his case quantity is beginning to overshadow quality.

You can’t close comment on “Julie & Julia” without mentioning that Ephron has chosen to include Dan Ackroyd’s famous “Saturday Night Live” sketch on Child (Powell and her husband are shown watching it on DVD at one point). What’s a little sad is that, even when Streep and Tucci strutting their stuff, the Ackroyd bit is still by far the funniest thing in the movie. That’s a signal that for all the talent invested in “Julie & Julia,” it’s ultimately a bland cinematic dish that needed more comedic spice.