Great Streets: The Champs Elysees

Having, in fact, strolled down the Champs Elysees in Paris earlier this year (and, yes, I do believe I hear the melodious sound of thousands of readers saying "hey, bite me"), I cued up this edition of Great Streets with, to quote Carly Simon, "anticipation." Once a central location for Parisians, the Champs (encompassing 16 blocks in a little over a mile) is today a highly commercialized mega avenue, dotted with designer shops and boutiques, cinemas, and tourist kiosks, and visited by an average of 300,000 people daily--mainly provincial visitors, international tourists, movie buffs…and in this case, actress/hit-and-run celebrity Halle Berry, our perky hostess. Beginning with the Egyptian obelisk (a gift from Egypt after the fall of France's monarchy at the end of the 18th century) at the Place de la Concorde, Berry breezily bounces her way down the Champs--on foot, thank goodness--stopping here for a perfume sample, there to see the Lido cabaret stage show, finishing up at the Arc de Triomphe, and always mugging for the camera as if she's on a Cosmopolitan photo shoot. Yes, there's a little bit of history, and some very nice scenery, but for every dryly recited infomercial for restaurants such as Fouquets, we're also regaled with the young thespian's vapid remarks on, say, McDonalds' fish sandwich. Neither entertaining enough to recommend as a stand-alone documentary, nor truly useful (like a Rick Steves travel video, for instance) for travelers, this is very optional. Other titles in the Great Streets series include: Grand Canal, Fifth Avenue, Sunset Boulevard and Edinburgh's Royal Mile. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)