The city of Monte Carlo is iconic. It boasts art from vast geographies, and an exotic and majestic setting that meshes a mountainside metropolis against the shores of a luxurious beach full of stunning women and gorgeous men. However, unfortunate circumstances have come to sully this magnificent city’s name in the form of an absurd fantasy straight from the imaginings of a tween girl.
This fantasy is also called Monte Carlo, and it is directed by co-writer Thomas Bezucha and stars Selena Gomez as Grace, a kind-hearted recent high school grad who finally saves up enough money to embark on her dream trip to Paris with her best friend Emma (Katie Cassidy) and her gloom-and-doom stepsister Meg (Leighton Meester). The trip goes awry when the trio is left behind by their tour bus and stumble into a not-so-golden opportunity to temporarily impersonate a rich young British heiress, Cordelia Winthrop Scott (also Selena Gomez), who is seemingly identical in appearance with Grace.
What would’ve simply been a free ride home turns into an all-expense paid luxury vacation to the city of Monte Carlo, which then turns into a week-long royal fundraiser for impoverished children, which turns into a fiasco of a romantic comedy involving an old boyfriend, new boyfriends, a false family act, and a very shiny necklace. The story ultimate tries to push across the moral that wealth in material currency is insignificant when compared to wealth in good character.
The ‘good character’ part of that point gets a little lost though. The two tag-alongs from the female trio are both written as incredibly generic characters, one a pessimistic lock-in emotionally tarnished by the past death of her mother, the other a high-dreaming southern gal who loves shoes, cake, and skimpy clothing. Grace, the most complex (for lack of a better word) character in the movie, is performed awkwardly by a young and still technically child-star Gomez who is more suited for the less technical roles of the younger characters she has played in her former movies.
Finally, the main man for the main –eh— girl, is Theo (Pierre Boulanger) who is the young host of the fundraiser and believes Grace is in fact the arrogant and selfish Cordelia at first, but eventually begins to fall for her true personality in turn. The unifying features of all the lead male character are typical for tween-teen romantic comedies—perfect dreamy hunks who give tremendous effort to be with their women and have few to no character flaws in regards to what the women in question want. Their other traits are –wait— nope, that’s it.
While the film is pleasing aesthetically and everyone looks pretty in their fancy dresses and designer tuxes, plot development seems to have been an afterthought in the studio’s formula. The dialogue is a sloppy attempt at balancing mature grown-up conversation with language appealing to ten-year olds and the transition between scenes is incoherent.
What initial positives this movie had going for it quickly disappeared as the plot twirled into an utter lack of reality so childish that it exceeds even the bounds of typical frothy tween lady-flicks. For a movie cast from such a good number of decently talented young stars, it is decidedly subpar. Films like this one obviously aren’t aimed at serious adult filmgoers, but most films in this genre at least maintain a level of charisma and allure that make them enjoyable for audiences of all ages. Monte Carlo does not.
[etRating value=“ 1.5”]
