Monte Carlo

Director: Thomas Bezucha
Writers: Thomas Bezucha,
Starring: Selena Gomez, Leighton Meester, Katie Cassidy
Release Date: July 1, 2011
Length: 1 hour 49 minutes

It’s time for the beloved teen sensation Selena Gomez to get her own movie, and the dozen she’s done for the Disney Channel do not count. She stars in Monte Carlo, with Gossip Girl actresses Leighton Meester, Katie Cassidy and Glee’s Cory Monteith. The film tells the story of Grace, a loser diner waitress whose been saving up money to go to Paris after she graduates with her older co-worker, Emma (Cassidy). When her older step-sister Meg comes in from New York to the graduation, both girls are shocked and not appeased to hear the parents are sending Meg with Grace and Emma, who Meg hated in high school. None of the three girls seem to be enjoying the trip, Emma, because she’s missing her trucker boyfriend Owen (Monteith), Meg, because she’s stuck on a trip with two people she does not get along with and Grace because the cheap hotel, cheap tour and cheap trip all around is not fulfilling her long dream. However, when they escape the rain into a fancy hotel, they see a snotty, rich lookalike of Grace, who they find out, is Cordelia Winthrop Scott (also played by Gomez), a British heiress who has left her paid suite to go elsewhere. In an effort to brighten Grace’s spirits, Meg and Emma convince a protesting Grace to stay in Cordelia’s suite for the night. However, when they leave the hotel in the morning, they are swarmed with paparazzi and are forced to duck into Cordelia’s limo, only realizing later they are on their way to Monte Carlo. They quickly decide they’ll have to continue on with the charade a little longer and do, after experiencing how much fun an heiress’ life can be in Europe. Soon though, it hits them though, (and maybe a little late) that they might be found out and could possibly go to jail for breaking multiple laws. Now, an adult probably won’t recognize the familiar story, but as a sixteen year old, I can clearly identify two prominent Hilary Duff movie premises inside this unoriginal movie. The main one being The Lizzie McGuire Movie, where Lizzie goes on a trip to another European city (Rome) on a graduation trip, where a blonde Lizzie is recognized by all Italians as their brunette pop sensation Isabella Parigi. At least they were at least creative enough to change the hair colour between the two characters. The second movie that stands out in Monte Carlo’s plot is A Cinderella Story, also starring Hilary Duff. The resemblance is the terrible setting both girls are in before they experience something better, a diner. Both gorgeous girls play people who have to deal with fellow high school students that make fun of them when they wait on their table but it’ okay because they both make friends with people much older than themselves also working at the diner. To steal a premise from a movie is annoying, but to steal a premise from another teen sensation’s movie eight years ago is just completely lazy. Unfortunately, the parts that weren’t copied from another movie were just bad clichés anyways, so the movie didn’t really have much novelty at all. That little act of plagiarism kind of cost the movie all of it’s credibility, but as far as enjoyment of the film goes, it can easily be classified as a guilty pleasure chick flick. There is a cute romance between Grace and Theo (played by French actor Pierre Boulanger), a son of a philanthropist, who is hosting Grace as Cordelia as well as Meg’s relationship with Riley (Luke Tracey) an Australian stranger, she coincidentally meets multiple times during the trip. All three actresses perform well for what the movie is, meaning they played to the cheesiness of the movie perfectly without being bad actors. Selena Gomez was great as the hopeless and likable teenager that 12 year olds can look up and relate to while Leighton Meester was very good as the uptight twenty something whose Mom died a long time ago, having affected her greatly while Katie Cassidy gave the most enjoyable performance as the confident and friendly high school dropout who is nervous to her hillbilly boyfriend that wants to marry her. The director and co-writer of this film, Thomas Bezucha, wrote and directed a wonderfully enjoyable family Christmas movie in 2005 called The Family Stone, starring Sarah Jessica Parker. You could consider this quite a step down for the filmmaker, which is sad to think about. If you’re looking for a cute guilty pleasure, it’s still an entertaining film. If you’re a younger than thirteen, you’re not registering any of the negativity toward this film anyways. Otherwise, you probably already know to not waste your time on Monte Carlo.