The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

The night before jetting off to Paris, best friends Grace (Gomez) and
Emma (Cassidy) are saddled with Meg (Meester), Grace’s stepsister, which puts a
dampener on things before they even set foot on the plane. Upon reaching Paris
and facing the squalor that is their room and the pure disappointment that is
their Paris-in-60-seconds tour, they find themselves running about in the rain,
thoroughly dejected.

To get out of the downpour, they duck into the nearest building; a
swanky hotel where heiress Cordelia Winthrop Scott, who just happens to look
exactly like Grace, has a suite that she has abandoned in favour of
Majorca. Grace is mistaken by the hotel staff for Cordelia, and the
three girls are collectively packed off to Monte Carlo where a ball and auction are being held in
Cordelia’s honour. In order to raise money to build schools in Romania, a magnificent necklace of Cordelia’s will be auctioned off for millions of dollars. Along the way, Meg meets Riley, an Australian adventurer,
while Emma dates a prince while trying to get over her ex, Owen (Monteith) and Grace
falls for Theo (Boulanger) who thinks she’s Cordelia.

This is the kind of film you watch for the sparkly dresses, cute guys
and the adorableness that is Selena Gomez, Katie Cassidy and Leighton Meester;
especially Meester: her Meg goes from frigid and snarky to bubbly and love-struck
in the space of two minutes, and while the transformation is highly
unrealistic, the film is all the better for it. Cassidy as Emma the Texan
waitress is the soul of adventure in the group. It’s mainly due to her
influence that they take full advantage of the case of mistaken identity.

Gomez plays both Grace and Cordelia. Grace doesn’t really have a fixed
personality and is essentially the middle ground between Meg and Emma. She’s
not as buttoned up as Meg nor as freewheeling as Emma; she fluctuates between
both extremes as is convenient for the story. However, Cordelia is a snooty ice queen that is thoroughly
self-absorbed and doesn’t care one iota about the Romanian kids that she’s
supposed to be raising money for. Outfitted with a permanent grimace, she’s a
funny alternative to Gomez’s sweet-as-pie persona.

For a film called Monte Carlo,
surprisingly little attention was paid to showcasing the glamour of
Monaco. Paris fared slightly better with shots of every touristy spot there.
While the cinematography was pretty, it failed to display that sense of
grandeur that Paris demands. This is also partly due to the extensive use of
‘La Vie En Rose’ in the soundtrack, the most obvious song choice ever.

All in all, this is a sweet chick flick that relies on the charms
of its leads rather than the story. It’s sweet and fun but ultimately
forgettable.