Monte Carlo – movie review

Everyone has a guilty pleasure. Mine currently is Wizards of Waverly Place, so I’m a bit of a Selena Gomez fan. I liked her in Ramona and Beezus, and I decided on a guilty pleasure treat with Monte Carlo. I really didn’t find it to be a treat, but one little girl in the audience proudly proclaimed after the end credits that it was the best movie ever. I have never seen a movie hit its target demographic so squarely on the head, so I decided to use my film school knowledge to see if I can figure out what Monte Carlo simultaneously did right and wrong.

The first thing Monte Carlo did wrong that kids might never pick up on was the horrible fake Texas accents used by Katie Cassidy’s character, Emma, and Cory Monteith’s, her boyfriend Owen. Emma was a high school drop-out and Owen was the stereotypical boyfriend who thought Emma should be happy with what she had in Texas, and they had the most obviously fake Texas accents ever. It was almost insulting. What was perplexing about it all was that Selena Gomez and Leighton Meester actually are from Texas, and their characters Grace and Meg didn’t have accents. I don’t know what purpose giving the Californian and the Canadian fake accents served, but it irritated me throughout the entire movie. I don’t know that I have much room to talk, though, as Selena Gomez’s fake British accent did not annoy me as much–but then again, her fake accent was essential to the storyline.

Another thing I didn’t like about Monte Carlo that once again kids might not notice is that it felt cheap. There was a Class of 2010 banner when Grace graduated high school, and it made me seriously wonder how and why a movie got pushed back a full year. First thought was budget problems. I’m not sure exactly what would have caused that, but it was a thought I had. Maybe it didn’t get pushed back a full year–it still means the production company just used a Class of 2010 banner they had lying around, and that’s still not a good sign for the movie. Also, every time the location changed in the movie, be it to Paris, Monte Carlo, or other parts, a cheesy graphic would appear on screen telling us where we were.  It felt like it was ripped out of Disney movies from the 1960s. Overall it seemed they didn’t put enough thought into the movie’s budget, and it was just cheap and rushed – just like the tour the characters went on in the movie.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was how Meg, Grace’s step-sister, even ended up going to Paris with Grace and Emma in the first place. Grace, who is 18, saved up for four years to go on this trip to Paris, and it was supposed to be her best friend Emma and her. However, in the interest of forcing the step-sisters to bond and because the parents didn’t trust Grace and Emma alone, they paid for Meg to go to Paris with Grace. They offered Grace and Emma upgrades on their tickets, but I had major problems with this storyline. An 18-year-old planned well in advance that she wants to go to Paris, saves up, is a legal adult and is going with a friend, and the step-sister who doesn’t even want to go gets her trip paid for, and for reasons that borderl on BS? If I were Grace and the movie were in real life, I would never speak to my parents again.

Obviously, the things I don’t like about Monte Carlo come from the fact that I’m not ten years old and know better. So what about the movie was so likable in the eyes of that little girl? Pretty much everything. If you can ignore the horrible accents and the cheap feel of the movie, it’s a pretty fun story. It’s a “princess and the pauper” type story where one of the parties isn’t aware of the switch, which is an interesting twist on a classic storyline. There’s adventure, friendship and bonding, love stories, expensive clothes, and it’s set in France. If I were a ten-year-old girl, that would be….Well, it might just be the best movie ever.

Monte Carlo is not a good guilty pleasure movie for adults, and I would not recommend it to anyone, not even to rent. Of course, there is an exception to that, and that’s if you have little girls in the right age group to enjoy the movie. For them, the movie is going to be pretty amazing–but only for them.