If ever there was a role that Paris Hilton was born to play it is Marie Antoinette. The essential ingredients are all there: the exquisite fashions, the excessive parties, combat by gossip, tiny dogs - and the lack of any meaningful life narrative, just a long exploration into the Zen of shallowness.

Unfortunately, Paris must have been busy elsewhere, probably hard at work on that other opus in the American pop-culture portfolio, "The Simple Life."

For the lead role in her costume drama "Marie Antoinette," director Sofia Coppola took another tack in choosing Kirsten Dunst and, considering the movie she finally made, it was an inspired choice.

"Marie Antoinette" follows the transformation of the doomed French queen from na