13. Blame the Olsen Twins

Criterion Collection: what's the hold up?

Many people blame Instagram for the way certain millennial Americans act in Paris, but it goes beyond that. It's not Hemingway or Emily in Paris or Amelie or Anna Karina or that scene from Frances Ha. The true culprit? The 1999 straight-to-VHS Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen movie, Passport to Paris.

In case you missed this cinematic masterpiece, here's the basic story: two suburban boy-crazy teens are forced to go on a trip to Paris to visit their grandfather. Hijinks include: zooming around the city with boys on mopeds, kissing said boys, befriending a supermodel, baguette sword fights, a Windows '95 virtual tour of the Louvre, shopping montages, and solving the city's sewage water crisis. (Anne Hidalgo found shaking.)

Hollywood has painted Paris in a flattering, unattainable light for decades, but this was the first time a movie directly appealed to bucket-hat-wearing American tweens in the suburbs. The movie has a Roman Holiday vibe to it, in the sense that the girls get to do whatever they want in a European capital and one of their love interests is played by Gregory Peck's grandson.

Even as an 11 year old, I knew the movie was a charcuterie board of tired stereotypes and clichés (escargot is… snails?!), but that didn't stop me from watching it repeatedly to the point of memorization. (I can't remember my French phone number, but I'm off book when it comes to the "Bonjour, bonjour, ohmygawd" scene.) The movie never turned me into a Francophile, but it did satisfy my need to see young, plucky women conquering France in cargo capri pants and platform flip flops.

When I first moved to Paris, I joined the first of many Facebook groups for women in the city. The most active members were usually the ones newest to Paris, who were eager to make friends. I went to happy hours and picnics to meet people. During that first year, I felt like I was dating around for a best friend. One of my go-to questions would be to ask if they had ever seen Passport to Paris.

Usually, they would say no, and I knew they were lying. If you were an American tween during the time of its release, you either saw and owned/repeatedly rented the movie or were relentlessly exposed to the commercials for it. That type of subliminal messaging can't be denied. 

I'm not saying we all moved to Paris because of the Olsen twins, but I'm saying we set ourselves up for disappointment, consciously or not, when we got here and realized we won't be having baguette fights. Much less, participating in huge diplomatic sewage water-related decision-making.