Thighs Wide Shut

The Queen of Versailles
Thrown From The Throne
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG | 100 min

Once upon a time, the rich got richer.  So much so that they didn’t even know what to do with themselves, or their money.  So when you don’t know what to do with your endless piles of cash monies why not build America’s largest private residence, at the sum of 90,000-square-foot, (in)complete with 21.2 bathrooms, a 20-car garage, 3 pools, a two lane bowling alley, a spa, a gigantic chefs’ kitchen + 10 smaller kitchens, which was all inspired by the bowling-lane-less Versailles in France.  Did we mention that this Windermere Florida home has a balcony that overlooks Disney World’s nightly fireworks display??  Is this the American dream heaven?  It’s actually America’s nightmare hell!

Sometimes the rich don’t always get richer.  Sometimes they fall, and fall realllly hard.  Who cares, ammmmiright, when there’s averages Joes and schmoes losing their jobs and can’t even afford the dollar store [correction – everyone can afford the dollar store].  Average Joes and schmoes may buy things they can’t afford, but they don’t build palatial estates with 21.2 bathrooms that no one can afford.  Well, as you may of heard, the financial bubble gone did done burst, and the creators of this Florida Versailles monstrosity, David & Jackie Siegel, got mired in a quagmire that’s more quaggy than anything that could ever be quaggied in a mire.  Exactly

Ya see, the Siegels were never able to complete their gaudy Versailles cause their timeshare selling company, which took advantage of poor people who have no money that bought timeshares they couldn’t really afford, time or share, had trouble selling any timeshares, cause the normal poor people that normally would buy them when they so poor that they shouldn’t really be buying them, couldn’t really really buy em anymos, cause they had even less money than the no money that they had before the bubble done burst, which directly led the Siegels to not have as much money as they were used to living with, which means stuff they can’t even imagine doing with much much less money (like not having 3812812273838 maids!!!).  OH THE IRONY!!!!!

moral of the story – there have been enuff boring and exhausting documentaries that have over-examined how the financial system failed, why it did and what it done did to us the normal poor peoples who go to the dollar store.  So it’s a cool and refreshing tall drink of sparkling water to see how the other half percent lives, and what happens when they fall out of that half percent.  Lauren Greenfield started off making a doc about greed and the building upon greed, but then stumbled upon an even better doc of the haves having not, that’s equal parts comical & depressing, and endlessly fascinating to watch.  Let them eat cake, and crappy cake too!!

$65(Not O)K:  all this half-built half-baked American dumphole palace to end all dumphole palaces can be yours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers

Queen reigns in NY & LA this Friday, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…