When a 17-year-old Austrian-born Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) marries King Louis XVI of France (Jason Schwartzman) she becomes and a part of the aristocratic monarch, does nothing for the good of France, and this movie does nothing good for the audience.

Marie enters the kingdom and the Louis is continuously not interested, for some reason, in consummating the marriage. Rumors fly inside the castle as to why and characters banter back and forth as they spend their days apparently doing nothing much more than going through the royal motions and drinking a lot. After some time, the King is persuaded that an unconsummated royal marriage could end in divorce and finally Marie gets pregnant and gives birth to a baby girl. The king spends most of his days avoiding the marriage by fox hunting all the time and Marie is left to find ways to spend her days.

I was very intrigued to see this film when I first heard about it. The cast seems like a good choice and the idea to use modern music for much of the soundtrack was a great idea (they even sold the soundtrack CDs at Urban Outfitters). Even the trailer and the posters gave off a cool indie vibe. But aside from the above mentioned and great costumes, I gotta tell ya folks, that’s all this movie had to offer. Don’t be fooled by it’s clever indie marketing strategy, which hooked me.

After a bit, I realized that this was just scene after scene of the same old thing: Marie going through the motions of the life of a queen. But after that point was made very clear, the movie doesn’t move on. Each scene of this two hour dud is more boring and worthless than the last. Then, towards the end, there is a revolt headed toward the castle and the royal family is instructed to leave for their own safety. All of a sudden, the King becomes too loyal to his kingdom to leave, and even more out of character than that, Marie becomes too loyal too flee as well, as she won’t leave the King’s side. This dedication to France and the King came out of nowhere, with nothing changing to make these characters make these decisions.

The worst part of this movie was by far the ending. Now, I’m going to assume that our readers were awake during 7th grade history class and everyone knows how this tale really ends. With that said, the film ends with Marie and her family finally fleeing from the castle in a carriage and a quick shot of a ransacked room in the castle and that’s it! I’m not kidding folks. They didn’t show them being captured or beheaded, which was the very pinnacle of this entire story. Almost as crazy as that, part of the description of the film that Yahoo! Movies gives is as follows: “Stripped of her riches and finery, imprisoned, and ultimately beheaded by her own subjects, the Queen of France became a toxic symbol for the wanton extravagance of the 18th century monarchy that incited to the French Revolution."

But the movie didn’t show any of that! None! at all! That’s not part of this movie at all folks. After I vocalized this to my wife, she said, “Well, that’s just not what this movie was about.” And I said, "What was it about then?” She thought for a moment and shrugged. That’s what I thought. Instead of ‘let them eat cake’ it should be ‘let them watch another movie.” Just avoid this one kids.

And on a side note for those that care, there was a lot more nudity than expected. See the Kids-In-Mind Ratings for more details.

What the DVD Offers