Monte Carlo (2011)
Directed by Thomas Bezucha
Written by April Blair, Maria Maggenti, Thomas Maggenti
Starring Selena Gomez, Leighton Meester, Katie Cassidy
Release Date July 1st, 2011
Published July 2nd, 2011
With Selena Gomez on the cover of the September issue of Elle Magazine, their LatinX special, I went and found one of the few times when I have had the chance to write about Selena Gomez. In 2011, Gomez co-starred with Leighton Meester and Katie Cassidy in the forgettable but pleasant teen comedy Monte Carlo. Selena Gomez proved to be a very natural lead for a teen comedy and because of her, Monte Carlo is more enjoyable than many similar teen girl comedies.
Monte Carlo is the story of three friends who travel to Paris for one of the worst tours of all time and stumble upon one truly unexpected adventure that finds one of them impersonating a tabloid superstar, all three jetting off to Monte Carlo, and each finding love in unique ways. Is it a great adventure? No, but for what it is, it's not bad.
Selena Gomez is the star of Monte Carlo as Grace, a Texas High Schooler who has just graduated. Her plan is to head off to Paris with her best friend, Emma (Katie Cassidy) but her mom (Andie McDowell) and step-dad (Brett Cullen) have an addition to her plans. Dad will upgrade Grace and Emma's travel plans if they don't mind having his daughter Meg (Leighton Meester) join the trip.
Naturally, there is tension between Grace and Meg; they haven't exactly bonded since their parents got together. They will need to get along however as once the trio arrive in Paris they quickly find themselves abandoned by their terrifically awful tourist group. The tour scenes are quite funny with the speedy tour guide dragging the group past Paris's greatest landmarks in less time than it would take to snap a picture.
Stuck in the rain and miles from their modest hostel accommodations, the girls stop off at a luxury hotel to dry off. That's when the adventure begins. At the hotel Emma and Meg encounter Cordelia Winthrop Scott (Gomez) and find that Grace is a dead ringer for the heiress. After overhearing that Cordelia is pulling a disappearing act that will have her out of the way for a week the girls hatch an accidental plot to replace her.
The plan was just to take Cordelia's luxury suite for a night in order to get out of the rain but the following morning finds the trio ushered to a limo and on to a private jet headed to Monte Carlo. From there the plot cleverly conspires to keep the girls from escaping. Most films of this sort, modest, middle budget, niche comedies, skimp on character motivation. Monte Carlo actually takes care to make sure that the characters are moving in particular directions for particular reasons.
Grace may not want to keep up the Cordelia charade but when she finds that a children's charity will suffer without Cordelia on hand to raise funds, she changes her tune. It helps that she is immediately smitten with Theo (Pierre Boulanger) the scion of the charity founder. Meg too wants to escape this situation but when she falls for an Aussie vacationer her plans change as well.
Monte Carlo is far from brilliant comedy but within its modest ambitions it is successful at earning smiles and a few minor laughs. The young stars are sweet and best of all they perform with purpose in a movie that has a clear motivation and coheres to a specific plot. Again, I cannot express how nice it is to watch a movie, especially a teen-centric comedy, that cares why characters do the things they do.
Selena Gomez was on the track for stardom ever since she started out as a regular playmate for Barney the Dinosaur. Gomez is sweet, smart and pretty and the makers of Monte Carlo showcase her playfulness as well as her beauty. Monte Carlo gets extra credit from me for portraying Gomez's young romance with a light and comic touch. The romance is sweet and chaste and fitting of the young and playful tone of the rest of Monte Carlo.
Leighton Meester also showed big star potential in Monte Carlo. Meester's roles prior to Monte Carlo had shown her to be a bland beauty with a mostly blank, expressionless face. In Monte Carlo however, especially in chastely romantic scenes with Aussie hunk Luke Bracey, Meester is lively and fun in an effortless yet PG friendly way. Considering that the role Meester took on just before Monte Carlo was the unwatchable supposed 'thriller' The Roommate, Monte Carlo was Casablanca by comparison.
Monte Carlo doesn't reinvent the teen comedy wheel but in its formulaic, PG comedy way, it's a pleasant distraction and a breath of fresh air compared to a kid comedies of the same time period, 2010 and 11, like Mr. Popper's Penguins or even a rom-com like Something Borrowed, both of which looked downright amateurish compared to the effortless family friendly fun of Monte Carlo which is both kid flick and modest rom-com.'
