A Review of 'Monte Carlo'
or 'Lizzie McQuire 2: The Disney Channel's Revenge'
I'm going to start out this review by saying that I'm reasonably confident the writer never really "wrote" this movie.
Instead, he dropped some serious fucking acid, started tripping balls, maybe did a few lines of coke and drank a bottle of wine to "calm the fuck down" and then sat in front of his tv, Macbook in his lap, and watched the Disney Channel for 34 hours straight until he could feel his feet again. At that point he probably collapsed into bed, woke up 12 hours later with no recollection of what had happened, ate a toasted sandwich and then stumbled across a fully type-written script with the words "Selena fucking Gomez in: 'Monte Carlo'" scrawled across the top.
To be honest with you, I need to cling to this belief. If I want to retain any faith in humanity, I need to believe that this is the only scenario in which movies like 'Monte Carlo' and 'Lizzie McQuire' could possibly spring forth, infecting the world (and tweens) with their shit morals and cringe-enducing monologues. I also need to believe that everyone involved in the making of this film became involved in exchange for mass quantities of strippers and blow. Even Selena fucking Gomez. (Apparently she has a drug problem now?)
'Monte Carlo' is the somewhat cautionary tale of a recent high school graduate/country bumpkin who wastes her life savings on a trip to Paris, despite the fact that she'll be starting at NYU in the fall. (Apparently no one has ever divulged the world's greatest secrets to her: Paris is somewhere you go with you partner, not your best friend, and New York is fucking expensive, so save your coin for a rainier day.) To be completely honest with you, this character isn't terribly memorable. I don't remember her name. What I do remember is that she was shoddily portrayed (by Selena fucking Gomez). She travels with her equally immemorable best friend (Katie Cassidy) and her step-sister, Meg (Leighton Meester) - the latter being the only character in the entire fucking movie with something sort of resembling dimension.
Selena fucking Gomez and her friends are having the worst vacation ever until it transpires that Selena fucking Gomez is a doppelganger for a bratty British celebutante. She is then mistaken for said celebutante, impersonates her socialite sister-from-another-mister, and goes on an all-expenses-paid trip to Monte Carlo full of girlish bonding, romance, and HELPING DISADVANTAGED EASTERN EUROPEAN CHILDREN.
The moral of the story - and I won't give away too much of the, erm, plot, here - is that fraud is ok and when you're caught there will be no legal ramifications... SO LONG AS YOU HELP THE CHILDREN.
And say your please's and thank you's. And provided you don't have sex before marriage (or at least "I love you"), you'll be ok.
Oh, Disney.
Oh, capitalism.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
I sort of stopped paying attention halfway through the movie because the "plot" is very convuluted, and also I abhor cliche, so trying to keep up with the plot (and also keep my popcorn down) became too difficult. And I watched the Disney Channel growing up, so if there's one thing I know, it's this: The moment things get difficult, you should give up. It's not worth it. Instead, I stopped listening and started looking instead (another lesson Disney taught me) and couldn't help be struck by how pretty everything and everyone in this movie is. It's like looking into the fucking sun for a prolonged period of time.
It's like going back to university in your 30's.
Oh, you think our university's are inundated with mature-age students because they want to upskill? Fuck no. They're there to perv, and nurse the hope that they might still get some twenty-something tail.
Let me preface the remainder of this review by noting that I didn't expect much from this movie. I went into this with a heavy heart, knowing that unless the three female leads got naked and started touching each other inappropriately this movie was guaranteed to suck. I mean, let's face it: they managed to cram the entire movie's plot into the three-minute long trailer, so this is sure to be a saccharine sop-fest where the attractive female lead mopes around about how difficult her life has become and how hard it is to manage all of her self-created problems while her sassy friends encourage her to chase after an equally pretty, just as vapid lead male, as happens in every OTHER movie targeting the tween demographic.
Straight up fucking doomed.
Except in this case there's three female leads, and all of them are moping around like their fucking cycles are synchronised in some cruel, hellish twist of fate, and they're all chasing their pretty boy of choice and falling in love and making commitments to people they've just met and know nothing about like it's 1951 and nobody has casual sex anymore. YOU CAN HAVE CASUAL SEX WITH PEOPLE YOU'VE JUST MET. You don't need to run around saying "I love you" 58 minutes into the movie, LEIGHTON MEESTER.
And while I'm on the subject of the cast, let's really talk about it.
Talk about it in what context, you ask? Talk about the fact that it's a mortifying shit storm of lackluster talent. It's Amalgamated Talentless Hack Inc. It's a hurricane of fuckwittery. This is the kind of acting that even the most grizzly, seasoned high school drama teacher would flinch at.
I mean, there's Finn Hudson from Glee - you know, that dude who's getting kind of chubby and can't sing or dance but still got cast as the lead male in a show about singing and dancing - and a girl with a bit of a dodgy Texan accent who I think was in Gossip Girl for a bit who I don't actually hate but who has thighs that remind me of toothpicks, and Leighton Meester (who I would not hesitate to go lesbian for... not even for a second) and then, finally, Selena fucking Gomez.
As in, the girl who's dating Justin Bieber.
I don't trust her judgement in sexual (or "non-sexual", whatever) partners, and I sure as fuck don't trust her taste in scripts.
Whoever's behind this movie made a seriously fucking dubious casting choice picking Selena fucking Gomez as a vehicle for this behemoth of mediocrity over some other pre-packaged Disney starlet like, say, Taylor Swift. What I really don't understand - and this isn't even necessarily a huge plot point, but the mind STILL boggles - is why movie producers expect me to believe that Selena fucking Gomez could possibly be unpopular in high school.
Yes, faceless movie mogul - I truly believe that she was walking around her highschool's hallways, totally anonymous. I genuinely believe not once did she come up in the boy's locker room; absolutely no discussion about how they would not hesitate to stuff Selena's locker, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. About how nameless and faceless and alone and bookish and sad she was in high school. After all, she's no beauty queen. She's just "beautiful me".
I feel like the mere act of portraying Selena fucking Gomez as someone who isn't hot is more damaging to my self-esteem than the fact that someone who looks like Selena Gomez actually exists.
If Selena Gomez wasn't hot, she wouldn't be in this movie. That's the God's honest truth. Because after watching this shit for an hour and too many minutes, I can tell you with absolute certainty and unprecedented clarity that Selena fucking Gomez can't act for shit. There are so many scenes that are emotional in ways that shouldn't emotional; the kind that make you feel a little bit queasy just to watch them. Key lines include: "I'm sorry that I ever thought I was the kind of person who could come to Paris."
Bitch, you should be. 'Cause now I have to sit through a movie about it.
So I could have summed this movie up by saying it's poorly written and not terribly realistic, and some of the acting is pretty camp and they obviously spent a lot more time on the shitty soundtrack (heavily laden as it is with pop songs and weird 1980's French jazz music) than they did perfecting Selena fucking Gomez's "British" lilt. (Her accent in this is utterly fucking offensive.) But let's face it... I paid good money to sit through this abomination. I've earnt the right to complain about it to anyone who'll listen. (Or read, as it were.)
Instead, I'm going to sum this movie up by saying it's kind of like theme park food. It's like eating nothing but fairy floss and hot dogs all day long: it's bareable but a part of you is still pretty worried about whether or not you're going to have a heart attack and how little nutrition you've actually gained from your fare. You're not really hungry, but you feel like maybe you could eat something, and so you make the concious choice to chow down on a Churro because "fuck, I secretly really love Churro's" - just like "fuck, I secretly love chick flicks aimed at teenage girls..." - but when you're finished, it'll leave you feeling queasy and strangely empty.
It's like going home with a girl who's kind of slutty and won't stop nibbling your ear and shit in the middle of the bar, but then you pay for the cab and you get her home and you're keen to smash but you suddenly realise that she's a dead starfish. The sex that you would have with that girl is kind of what it feels like to sit in a theatre and watch this movie.
Don't go see this movie. Don't rent it on DVD. In fact, don't go see any movie/rent any DVD that stars anyone from this movie.
(Except Leighton Meester. I adore her. She's witty and darling. She has really dewy skin and shiny hair that curls perfectly and she's all doe-eyed, and I just want to crawl inside of her body and become her. I love her voice, too... it does things to me. And she speaks French in this movie.)
I give this a rating of 2.5/5. I'll probably watch this again some time when I'm hungover and it'll make me feel better about my life.
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