Directed by: Martha Coolidge
Written by:John Quaintance, Jessica O’Toole, Amy Rardin
Starring: Hilary Duff, Haylie Duff, Anjelica Houston, Maria Conchita Alonso, Brent Spiner, Lukas Haas
Released: September 14, 2006
Grade: C-

Tanzie and Ava Marchetta are rich teenage snobs.  Two years ago, they inherited their father’s wealthy cosmetics company after he passed away.  Continuing to live their life of luxury, these girls only look out for themselves and have no sense of reality.

As the spokespeople for Marchetta Cosmetics, Tanzie and Ava’s faces are plastered across billboards.  They attend Hollywood’s A-list get-togethers.  Their marketing team ensures their activities are covered on E! news.  Ava is about get engaged to a young heartthrob but the announcement is being delayed so that a big party can be thrown and the media can be informed.

Sadly, these poor unfortunate girls lack business savvy.  Their company has been struggling and so their appointed trustee, Tommy Katzenback (Spiner), suggests that they accept a take-over offer of $150m from rival Fabiella (Huston).  As the girls think over the offer, the company is stung by bad publicity.  A television journalist has reported that some of the cosmetics cause severe facial disfigurations.

This sends the share price falling and Fabiella is now only prepared to offer $60m for the company.  Boo hoo!  The girls will not stand for this and begin a mission to clear their tarnished image and get the company back to its full, profitable self.  It won’t be easy however because they accidentally burn down their house, give their car away and have their credit cards cut off (because the company can’t afford them???).

Given this film is purportedly based on the Hilton sisters, I’m surprised Tanzie and Ava didn’t release a sex video.  They could have easily clawed back their lost $90m and still kept their faces on every second page of every second tabloid magazine.  It would have made for a more interesting movie.  Instead, writers John Quaintance, Jessica O’Toole and Amy Rardin think that we’ll feel sorry for them.  Give me a break!!!  They deserve a bullet, not sympathy.

If, and that’s a big if, you can suspend your disbelief and go along with this farce of a storyline, you’ll be bored to tears by the plot developments.  Within 15 minutes, I knew exactly how the film would end and who would fall in love.  The remaining 82 minutes is jam-packed with filler material that belongs on the cutting room floor.  Outtakes are shown during the closing credits but they aren’t even close to being funny.

On the Internet Movie Database, a website I love to refer to, Material Girls has been ranked by the public as the 6th worst movie of all time.  May it gather dust on video store shelves for many years to come!