Why We Loved Mary-Kate and Ashley Movies

Growing up, I was obsessed with Mary-Kate and Ashley movies. And I know you were too. We were all under the MK & A spell. Why though? Because they were the bomb. Those twins had it made. And their straight-to-DVD movies just exploited how they could get literally anything they wanted and for some reason we didn’t mind—we lived vicariously through their totally awesome lives.

They were 15-year-old jet setters. Mary-Kate and Ashley traveled everywhere. In their movies they went to Paris, Rome, London, The Bahamas, Sydney…I don’t understand when they got their homework done! In their world, anything was possible, especially when you had a private car driving you around an “exotic” city. They also stayed in the most fabulous of places. In my personal favorite, Passport to Paris, their grandfather just so happened to be the U.S. ambassador to France so the twins shacked it up in his embassy mansion with the butler and personal chef, Henri, who, by the way made the girls multiple main course dinners, which they promptly refused to eat because obviously their sophisticated American palettes just could not handle his escargot and pâté tu fagois. Or they were just two spoiled brats who wanted their half pepperoni, half sausage Dominos pizza.

They always got the hottest boys…who invariably were foreign with the worst fake accents.

Oh the men of MK & A. At every destination they traveled to, the girls happened upon two cute boys native to whichever foreign land the girls were visiting and who were the only two people who could put up with the twins’ crazy American antics. The “French” boy in Passport to Paris got it right though. He really captured the ignorant-Americans-gone-abroad-and-think-they’re-cultured absolutely perfectly: “Zee American girls, zey walk like zis…bonjour, bonjour, bonjour…OH MA GOD!” Click here to see the full amazingness that is Passport to Paris romance.

They had the best clothes and haircuts…and they pulled off matching twin outfits somehow. I don’t know how they did it, but Mary-Kate and Ashley always managed to look great in matching twin outfits. One would wear the pink set, the other would wear the blue one. And it wasn’t just the clothes. They had matching sunglasses, backpacks, haircuts, you name it.

Everyone wanted to be a twin because of these two. Matching wasn’t cool until MK & A came along. I even wanted my hair to be exactly like theirs. Seriously, though, I brought in a picture of them from the cover of Passport to Passport to my hairdresser…needless to say it did not come out the same. In a lot of their movies though, they did stress the whole we’re twins but we’re actually super different from each other so one of them would be really sporty while the other would be really into fashion…or something along those lines.

They always out-did the lame adults. Their movies were like in-depth, clean versioned Blink-182 songs. In Billboard Dad they broke pretty much all the rules and they definitely were doing some illegal activity when camouflaging themselves, sneaking onto a billboard in the middle of the night and painting it. That was some serious rebellion. And I was all about it. They never listened to the adults, who we were supposed to believe knew absolutely nothing and were simply uptight losers who just didn’t understand the brilliant youth that is Mary-Kate and Ashley.

They were schemers who always got their way in the end. Whether it was pulling the old twin-switcharoo and fooling everyone or out-doing and capturing thieves in Australia, these two crazy kids were like top-notch CIA agents who got to live happily ever after…every time. Basically, in virtually every movie, they got the boys, the clothes, the touristy experiences and got to go home thinking they were the coolest things since sliced bread (which they kinda were). I must say, the “Complicated” speech from New York Minute really encapsulated the Olsen twin wisdom.