Big Bird Goes to Cordon Bleu

By Mad Dog
Published: Jul 11, 2009

It seems every woman I know can hardly wait for August 7th, when civilians can finally see "Julie & Julia", Nora Ephron’s film about Julie Powell, a New Yorker who cooks her way through every recipe in Mastering the Art of french Cooking, Vol. 1, and Julia Child, who’s played by Meryl Streep. If you know anything about Child, the preview for ‘Julie & Julia’ will make you appreciate anew the phrase “based on”, for this Child is a distant cousin to the woman in Child’s memoir, My Life in France. Maybe she gets serious later in the film and somehow produces a book that revolutionizes French cooking, but in the preview, Ephron’s Child is a comic figure, a rudderless buffoon — Big Bird goes to Cordon Bleu. I’m sure audiences will be thrilled by Streep and charmed by Amy Adams as Julie Powell, but if you’re curious to know a story closer to the real one….read the book.