FILM

USA 2011 109 mins Dir: Thomas Bezucha Starring: Selena Gomez, Leighton Meester, Katie Cassidy, Catherine Tate

A feeble tweenie companion piece to Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris', in which a trio of American girls live their dream in the south of France, 'Monte Carlo' is a vehicle for Justin Bieber's squeaky-clean, chipmunk-faced Disney Channel squeeze Selena Gomez. You certainly can't fault this hymn to unmerited fame for chiming perfectly with the zeitgeist, if you believe the survey claiming that the sole ambition of more than 70% of teenage girls is to be a celebrity. But poor Ms. Gomez is presented with a challenge beyond her modest talents in playing two roles, one of which is a rather unlikely Hispanic English posho with a cut-glass accent.

Said posho is Cordelia Winthrop Scott, a snooty heiress who's the spitting image of Texan teen Grace (Gomez again). Grace is fulfilling a lifelong dream to visit France with her airhead blonde pal Emma (Cassidy), but is also lumbered with wet-blanket stepsister chaperone Meg (Meester). When mistaken for Cordelia, she hesitates for all of 30 screen seconds before helping herself to the conveniently absent heiress's jewellery and clothes and being whisked off to Monte Carlo for a big charidee event, with Emma, Meg and the paparazzi in tow. All three girls then get romanced by hunksters of various nationalities, which at least silences whiny Meg's conscience for a while.

Naturally, there's a perfunctory comeuppance right at the end after lots of snogging, partying and dressing up. Grace learns a lesson from - titter! - Gandhi, while Emma realises her destiny is with a dull hometown bloke rather than Johnny Foreigner, so long as he invests in a fancy dimmer switch. A cameoing Catherine Tate, meanwhile, pockets her cheque and hopes that no one will recognise her. (Robin Askew)

website www.facebook.com/officialmontecarlomovie

Opens: October 21

Copyright Robin Askew 2011