From Riches to Rags

 This week, I'm doing a movie review for my Media class on a documentary I watched this weekend.

"We've been doing this for four hours!"
"Three."
"We've been doing this for three hours."
These are the very first lines of the documentary I watched for my review. The couple that are the main focus of the documentary are having professional portraits taken. The husband is 74. The wife is 43.
"The Queen of Versailles" is a movie about the Siegels, an incredibly rich family that earned its fortune through building timeshare resorts, the Westgate Resorts, to be precise.
The film follows Jackie, the wife, as she at first struggles with managing her household of 8 kids, and then eventually of managing her life and her budget when her husband's company starts to crumble after the 2008 stock market crash.
Because the movie is a documentary, there isn't really a made up plot or any acting, but there is some very good cinematography. At one point, three of the eight kids are on a merry go round, and the cinematographer is also with them, so the shot is just the kids spinning around and around, and it's very nauseating, but also very cleverly done.
The film's director, Lauren Greenfield, does the interviewing, but her voice is very rarely heard. The majority of the film is made up of footage of the family as they are followed around by cameras.
A lot of the problems the Siegels had before their monopoly was in jeopardy seemed like a joke to me. (Victoria, the 12 year old daughter, couldn't decide what color she wanted her hair to be when all the contestants from the Miss America foundation came to their party.) However, after their company's almost-downfall, the pet lizard dies from hunger, the kids have to go to public school and Jackie starts buying her over one hundred Christmas presents for the kids at Walmart.
The movie, although wonderfully edited and very funny at times, is one that is depressing and a little sickening. It was good though, a movie meant to make us think about what we have and don't have. It's relevant too, with the economy in a shambles. The Siegels may be filthy rich and a little (unknowingly) snotty, but they have good hearts, and in the end, you'll find the only reason to dislike them is the fact that they almost lived in a house ten times the size of your own.
So that's the end of my review, and here's the official trailer. (The person dressed as Rudolph is one of the three nannies.)



The Queen of Versailles
100 min
Rated PG