Confessions of a Shopaholic (Touchstone Pictures)
Shallow and Silly
Confessions of a Shopaholic is the wrong movie at the wrong time. This silly and shallow film based on the novels of Sophie Kinsella is full of easy spending and overindulgence. The main character, Rebecca Bloomwood, comes across as an airhead who somehow manages to attain a modicum of success. She and the movie are not very likeable and so the entertainment value is minimal.
Rebecca (Isla Fisher) is a woman who can not pass up a sale ever! When the movie starts she is over sixteen thousand dollars in debt and is being hounded by a debt collector named Derek Smeath (Robert Stanton). She has just lost her job but gets an interview with Alette Magazine, a fashion magazine she has always adored.
She doesnt get the job at Alette but in quirky fashion does get hired by a financial magazine edited by Luke Brandon (Hugh Dancy). There she writes a column on shopping that becomes very popular. But still the tenacious Mr. Smeath hunts for her.
Rebecca comes across as a woman who gets her worth from what she owns. She is not a very loyal friend or a conscientious employee. Her world rarely extends beyond her own wants and needs. Even at the end of the film when she is finally redeemed the change is not convincing.
Fisher doesnt have the skills necessary to make Rebecca loveable in spite of her addictions. If there had been a warmth to the character that overrode all her other eccentricities, then she might have been worth watching. But as played by Fisher she is just a self-centered young woman who deserves all the problems she gets.
Dancy does not help much in the role of Brandon. You never get a real sense of who or what his character is. And you never understand what draws him to Rebecca. Dancy and Fisher are searching for the core of their characters throughout the film but never succeed in finding them.
The film is rated PG for mild profanity.
John Goodman and Joan Cusak pop up as Rebeccas bargain hunting parents. Kristin Scott Thomas waltzes through as the head of Alette Magazine. SNLs Fred Armisen has a few scenes as Lukes boss, and Wendy Malick makes an appearance as the head of a shoppers anonymous group. None of these add anything to the enjoyment level of the movie.
In these days of tight money and rampant unemployment a silly movie about excess spending is not an escape, it is a nightmare. The times they are a changing and this movie is caught making jokes about a very serious situation.
I scored Confessions of a Shopaholic a spent 4 out of 10.
