Monte Carlo (2011)

What a sweet little movie! It has all the cliches, in particular with the early portrayal of French people (a naked hairy guy wearing just a basque and a smile as he reads Le Monde? Really, movie? Really?), but gets away with it with charme. I did not care much for the main character, but Katie Cassidy is a splendid catalogue model and Leighton Meester plays her part quite competently as well. The direction of the movie is formulaic but with some good choices in terms of angles and there's even a sequence with Selena Gomez playing both her characters at once that left me shocked for a moment as I was not sure how they actually did the trick.

The script is more or less third rate, kinda falling apart with the auction drama at the end, where nothing seems to really make sense. Let's face it, the 'mistaken identity' plot device has been used, abused and exploited to death for ages, and this hardly says anything new. However, it could have been obnoxious, while what we have here is a perfectly watchable movie with just 'something' that elevates it, even if by all means don't expect anything but a movie good for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Not really sure how it even got a theatrical release to begin with, although I suppose Selena Gomez had enough name value to make it worth a shot.

Sammo ★