Review of The Queen of Versailles (2012) by Chantal V — 25 Nov 2012

Interesting yet disburbing, reassuring yet discouraging. A constant struggle between "OMG these people shouldn't be allowed to even exist" and "Hm well maybe their purpose is to make me feel good about myself".

Not a great movie for animal lovers: rooms full of poop (a la The Osbournes), puppies that nobody has seen since they were given as a Christmas present, floating dead fish and an iguana basically murdered by a daughter that hasn't given it food and water because "nobody takes me to the pet store anymore".

Nobody even gets punished, grounded, reprimanded for it. For me, enough reason to gloat intensily about their 'misery' (mind you, half the world would want to trade with what these people call misery) and to be very disappointed to learn that they have in the meantime recovered and are rebuilding their.

.. well, empire. Make no mistake - even though Mr. Siegel seems the sanest of the lot, he's worse than all of them together. Search the net for his 'involvement' the last two US elections - vote Republican or be fired, is basically his motto.

He knows it's highly illegal for an employer to try and influence his employers' vote, but he still brags about it, even in this movie - apparently, the wealthy are above the law. If you can forget about that when watching this movie, it's a well put together peek in a world far far away.

Probably even far better than the filmmaker expected, since apparently the original idea was to follow them whilst constructing their version of Versailles - for whom the economic crisis must've been a blessing because it gives this movie a depth and dark side it probably otherwise wouldn't have had.