Watching Marie Antoinette, I couldn’t help but think of Paris Hilton. Imagine, if you will, a pretty blonde princess whose life up till now has had little to no consequence, whose closest companion is a tiny dog she keeps with her at all times, who suddenly finds herself thrust into the limelight for unearned adoration and brutal scrutiny. The pretty blonde princess herself is hard to dislike, but close inspection only reveals someone who, until now, is basically blameless. Mildly interesting, mostly forgettable. Certainly no one you’d put in a position of consequence.

So goes Sofia Coppola’s latest. Many of the reviews and commentary (most coming out of the now-infamous screening at Cannes) on the film have questioned its historical integrity and lightness of subject matter; I can only guess those folks were looking for more head-chopping and less shoe-shopping. That anyone sat through the two hour screen time and expected historical accuracy and grim violence is a little surprising to me; I’m not sure they were watching the same movie I was.

Marie Antoinette is not a true period piece, nor does it have ambitions to be factually correct. If you couldn’t figure that out from the ad campaign or the selection of music, then the biggest clue is in the casting. When you think of royalty in 18th century Versailles, do you think of Rip Torn, Jason Schwartzman, Asia Argento, Steve Coogan, Molly Shannon, and Marianne Faithful?

What we have instead is a lavish production of the parable of the modern princess. The point, I suppose, is that Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) spends the twilight years of her frictionless existence avoiding the consequences of her position. Many aspects of her life are failures, and no one seems willing to connect with her on a meaningful level. To soothe her pain, Marie engages in the unimaginative hedonism of someone in their late teens: parties, shopping, sweets, and the occasional handsome soldier. Retail therapy seems to work—or at least distract her—right up until the barbarians are quite literally at the gates. Heedless teenager, welcome to the life of Extreme Consequence.

But don’t think I’m defending Marie Antoinette. It’s a very pretty film, dressed up in all the colors of Versailles and artfully arranged to be both anachronistic and modern. People who care about that sort of thing more than I do will enjoy all the eye candy. But the sad, simple truth is that no one goes to the movies (or reads a book, or watches TV, or sees a play) to see the main character resolutely avoid decisions and consequences for as long as she possibly can. Don’t get me wrong: I “get” the movie, what it’s about, and why it chooses to tell the story (such as it is) the way it does. I just don’t think it’s very interesting.

Slightness is enough to bury a film, but compound that slightness with unchecked decadence and you’ve got what amounts to a cinematic sin. Did we need 20 minutes devoted to the minor melodrama of whether or not Marie would honor King Torn’s mistress by addressing her in public? Did we need conspicuously long tracking shots of travelling carriages in transition scenes that could have been cut with no one the wiser? Even the humorous scenes are drawn out far, far too long. On Marie’s first morning in Versailles, she is greeted by an entourage of court nobles. Tradition says the highest-ranking woman in the room has the honor (?) of dressing Marie herself. The woman dressing Marie explains is, and is then interrupted when someone of higher rank enters the room and must take over her duties. This is funny the first time, and maybe even the second time. Ah, but it just keeps going…

The performances are servicable. Many have talked about the brilliant performance of Jason Schwartzman as the nebbish, sexless cipher Marie is forced to marry. And he is funny, in a one-note joke sort of way. And Kirsten Dunst is believable as a basically harmless flake who only occasionally grasps the true forces moving her life. But even ensconced in the riches of Versailles, they are basically mundane people with meandering and ultimately uninteresting lives. The mobs of peasants screaming for blood in the film’s final minutes give them a sort of forced gravitas, as if we’re only now realizing what decent, even noble people these two truly are. It doesn’t work.

You’ll probably hear the word “misfire” a lot when reading about Marie Antoinette; the critical consensus on the film is nearly universal. I don’t think “misfire” fits. The word implies an ambitious effort that went off the tracks somewhere but still retains something to admire. There’s very little to admire here. Marie Antoinette is simply a mistake.